Baring it all — for involvement

How often have you boarded a plane and completely ignored the flight crew who are there, primarily, for your personal safety? We’ve all napped through the preflight instructions that they recite as soon as the main cabin door is closed and locked down tight. Maybe for good reason: they are being robotically repeated for the umpteenth time that day. I’m sure even the flight attendants get bored with the message.

Enter involvement. A select group of actual Air New Zealand employees were selected for their “professional attributes” to participate in a passenger safety video. But this is no ordinary video. Clad in nothing more than body paint that mimics their ground crew or flight crew uniforms, this cheery bunch give us a different view on airline safety. As one male purser explains in the opening of the reel, “…we’d like to give you what we call the ‘bare essentials of safety’ aboard this flight.” Followed by a rather perky female co-worker stating, “Even if you fly with us quite a lot, we’d appreciate it if you’d take — (with the rise of her eyebrows) — a second look.”

“It’s such a fantastic thing to do to involve your own employees, I think, in adverts,” said one svelte ground crew member, as a bright yellow safety vest was being applied to his torso, “’cause it gives a level of authenticity.”

Posted on YouTube, the video has been viewed almost 5 million times — and counting. Take a peek at the in-flight reel and the amusing, behind-the-scenes “making of” video. There’s also a clever 45-second TV ad which closes with a duo of mature women admiring a pair of male captains as they pass by in the airport.

Stripping it all away, there is no better way to capture the attention of both your audiences and your employees, than by using involvement.

Thanks for being involved today.

Tim