Remember “Mr. Mom,” that 1983 Michael Keaton movie about the car executive who turns house-husband after a layoff? His wife takes an ad agency job and gets assigned to the troublesome “Schooner Tuna” account. And after assorted wackiness, she comes up with the perfect ad campaign: a temporary price cut to show that Schooner cares about its customers’ real worries and is, in fact, “the tuna with a heart.”

Brands are now rushing to prove themselves heirs to the Schooner legacy with programs meant to reassure consumers that they’ll be neither buried in debt nor cut off from vital resources if they lose their jobs. In one policy swoop, they’re acting to overcome buyers’ fears and build brand loyalty.

The latest brand in a hurry to demonstrate heart is wireless carrier Virgin Mobile, which announced a new “Pink Slip Protection” plan that will waive up to three months of the fees for its pre-paid wireless subscribers who lose their jobs while they’re subscribers to the network.

Economic woes are hitting particularly hard with the core users of prepaid mobile plans. They often have lower incomes than the average mobile subscriber and rely on prepaid plans to both offer lower per-call costs and to help them budget their monthly expenses. Apart from not requiring long-term contracts, the pay-before-you-say plans don’t require credit checks and don’t impose cancellation fees.

“With the unemployment rate rising, the fear of job loss or salary reductions has made consumers watch every dollar,” Virgin Mobile CEO Dan Schulman said in a statement. “These issues tend to impact our prepaid base more than many wireless users, so we hope this program can offer some peace of mind to our customers.”

According to the fine print, the Pink Slip Protection plan applies only to customers who are employed when they enroll, who sign monthly plans without annual contracts (Virgin offers those too) and who are activated on the network for at least two months before filing for Pink Slip help. Meet those conditions, the carrier says, and it will pay as much as $90 a month for three months in order to help the laid-off member use a cell phone to find a new job.

While it may help boost loyalty within current prepaid users, the new program might also appeal to the large contingent of phone subscribers who are looking to shave their monthly costs generally. As dependence on mobile phones increases, more customers are choosing to cut their landline connections, especially among renters and young people. A study by the National Center for Health Statistics last December showed that 17.5% of U.S. households now have only a mobile phone, up 10 percentage points from the same study in 2006.

In this climate, anybody tempted to reduce the household nut might find it appealing to go that one step further and switch to a prepaid mobile plan. Virgin also cut the price on its unlimited prepaid plan to $49.99 a month from $79.99.

Combined with the Pink Slip initiative, that price point might have lots of appeal for the budget-minded mobile market at large.

Other companies have moved to show consumers that their feel their current or prospective financial pain by implementing policies that take the worry out of shopping. Now that Hyundai’s assurance plan has helped it post a 4.9% gain in Q1 2009 sales in the U.S.—as opposed to an overall 40% drop for the same quarter among all car companies—both Ford and GM have instituted their own versions of the lose-your-job-and-we’ll-help-pay-for-your-ride tactic.

Other brands have chimed in, playing up any connection they might have to job-hunting. Jos. A. Bank Clothiers is offering “risk-free suits”.

A bit more tenuously, luggage vendor Skyroll is offering a 50% discount on its airline-ready bags for any customer who has just lost a job and needs to travel to get to an interview. All you need to do, the Web site says , is e-mail a copy of your layoff notice on the letterhead of your former employer and tell Skyroll which of their products you want to buy.

At first glance it would seem micro-targeting to go after this part of the unemployed market. After all, anyone who’s jetting off to a job interview rather than waiting for the bus can probably afford to pay full price for a bag, right?

Still, since you only need to show Skyroll proof of your layoff, not of any impending job interview as head cashier at the Casino de Monte Carlo or taster to the Sultan of Brunei, I guess it could introduce Skyroll’s wares to a hidden market of customers who might be job-hunting via Greyhound rather than Gulfstream.