Have you been on a British Airways plane recently? They have managed to transform the humble safety video with a star studded cast and a refreshing approach. The video with a difference was created in conjunction with Comic Relief and launched in September.
I first saw it on a weekend trip and giggled along as they went through the various safety elements with different actors (Rob Brydon demonstrating the jacket was my favourite …) I thought it was a great way to refresh an important series of messages and re-engage jaded frequent flyers. On the return trip 2 days later, they showed the same video which lost some of its impact as I had already seen it.
As it happens I had a work trip the following weekend, and yes, the same video. And again on the return trip. My colleague and I ended up predicting and joining in with the lines.
It strikes me that gathering all those celebrities and actors together must have been an enormous feat – and surely they were hanging around with potential to say more than one or two lines. Why not make the most of it?
Frequent flyers are notoriously the hardest to communicate with when it comes to safety advice, and it’s most likely to be seen week in, week out by them.
If they had mixed it up and swapped people around, they could have created 4 or 5 versions of essentially the same video but with different characters playing different parts each time.
Having said that, it’s had more than 7 million views on YouTube so perhaps it’s doing what it’s supposed to do! You can see it here if you haven’t already.