Why airline safety videos are getting catchier

By A.W. | WASHINGTON, DC

IT HAS been a familiar routine for decades: you find your seat on a plane, strap in and make yourself comfortable, and just as you are settling down with latest issue of The Economist, you are interrupted by a safety announcement.

Most people who fly regularly find it easy to tune out the instructions on how to buckle a seatbelt and inflate a life jacket. But in recent years, they have become a lot harder to ignore. That’s because the safety videos have become entrancingly, maddeningly catchy.

When—and how, and why—did this begin? It may feel like an overnight development, but the phenomenon is nearly a decade in the making. Virgin America is widely credited with launching the genre of entertaining safety videos, with a crudely animated effort in 2007. It marked a significant departure from the boilerplate videos that preceded it, but by today’s standards it’s still something of a snoozer.

Air New Zealand was next. In 2009, it pioneered a new development in safety instruction: videos that would catch the attention not just of passengers, but also of the masses on the internet. These served the dual purpose of forcing jaded flyers to pay attention and marketing the airline on the web. Its masterpiece was a video narrated by nude airline crew members wearing body paint resembling their uniforms. The instructions were unadorned and straightforward, but the delivery was eye-catching.

Within a few weeks, a related 45-second commercial had become the most-viewed YouTube video ever from New Zealand. It was cheap publicity. According to the New York Times, “Each video took a day to shoot and cost about 10% to 15% of the cost of a major brand commercial.” (The paper added cheekily, “The Air New Zealand staff members did not receive extra pay, just increased exposure.”)

Air New Zealand raised the bar again, for better or worse, in 2011, with a video that went well beyond simple safety instructions. Richard Simmons, a flamboyantly goofy fitness guru, narrated the video in the style of a 1980s exercise tape. It is amusing in a zany sort of way on first watch, but impossible to watch more than twice in a 24-hour period.

Nonetheless, it gained more than 2m YouTube views in a week. (Less viral was a head-scratcher of a video the airline recorded with Snoop Dogg that same year.) Air New Zealand’s biggest hit was a Middle Earth-themed safety video, starring Elijah Wood and director Peter Jackson, that was released in 2014 in conjunction with the new Hobbit movie.

It was a Virgin America video that first captured this writer’s attention. Released in 2013, this musical interpretation of the safety instructions features better dance moves (and frankly higher production value) than much of what is found on MTV.

Despite being the pioneer of the genre and one of its most successful players, the recently sold Virgin America was not a frequent innovator here. According toMashable, these two videos are the only ones the airline ever made: “As a small airline—it carried about 6.5m passengers in 2014, compared to American Airlines’ nearly 200m—its marketing budget simply doesn’t allow for a safety video reboot every six months, the pace at which Delta and Air New Zealand are cranking them out.”

Then there are alternate takes on the genre, like the one adopted by the Philippines’ Cebu Pacific, whose flight attendants favour a live safety performance while dancing to Lady Gaga. That would probably grab a dozing passenger’s attention better than any video could.

With these modish safety demonstrations becoming the norm, the question is what, exactly, do they accomplish? Yes, they are more likely to gain some flyers’ attention, but with some stretching to five minutes in length, they may also be just as likely to lose it. The useful instructions can get lost amid all the dancing, singing and cartoon characters. And despite greater variety, these videos are not actually delivering messages that are any clearer or more memorable. In fact, they all repeat certain points almost verbatim. That’s because aviation regulators usually require them to address certain subjects. As Mashable notes:

Among the topics that safety demonstrations must cover: how to use the seat belt, an explanation of lighted signs within the cabin, a reminder that passengers have to pay attention to those lighted signs and to crew member instructions, the location of emergency exits, requirements for passengers seated in emergency exit rows, instructions to leave baggage behind in the event of an emergency, how to use the oxygen masks, the location of life vests, the admonition that seatbacks and tray tables must be in the upright position, and the rule that there’s no smoking on board.

If the films are catchy enough to transcend the cabin walls and catch fire on the internet, they serve as valuable advertising. And they probably contribute to flyers’ sense that certain airlines, like Virgin America, are hipper and friendlier than their stodgier competitors. Still, if you are interested in what an honest in-flight announcement might sound like, you could do worse than read our leader on the subject from 2006.