Ever since the internet, airline safety videos do not belong only to the passengers anymore. We now see this kind of videos every now and then on the internet and we find them getting more and more creative. Thanks to the social media’s nature to make everything goes viral, airline safety videos now have additional purpose: branding opportunity.
Some airlines, in pursuit of branding opportunity, go well over the top and spend big budget on it. One video even has closing credits — something you normally see on a movie. Another video has director’s cut version. Nevertheless, it is clear that the target audience is shifting towards those who watch it in the comfort of their home.
I’ve watched so many airline safety videos on Youtube that I can categorize them in at least five types. There could be more, but this is all for now. Let’s get down to it.
The first is the standard safety videos. It is like the in-person pre-flight safety procedures demonstrated by flight attendants, but in a recorded form. It’s rather boring, but covers all the required information. This type is considered as old-fashioned and rarely used now, compared to other types.
The next category is funny. By funny I mean humor, unique, or interesting. It’s that kind of video that makes you wonder who came out with that idea and appreciate the production process. Like this Delta Airline’s exploitation of meme and gymnastic silhouette by Air Astana.
We associate flight with travel the most, so it is no wonder that tourism is a theme here. From this Air France’s video you probably can spot enough landmarks and tourist attractions. It’s grande in production and feels very enticing to passengers as well as viewers at home.
As if showing tourist attractions is not enough, here we have a big-budget kind of type that I will call epic. Let’s just take a look at this Air New Zealand’s rendition of The Lord of The Ring. Another extravagant safety video is Qantas’s 8 minutes that take us to trip down memory lane.
The last category is quite something: musical. I don’t know the thinking behind this, but I assume it goes like this: songs serve as a catchy mnemonic, therefore musical safety videos will perform effective. But we should not confuse being enjoyable with being memorable — especially if you don’t listen to it on a daily basis. Here is one example from Virgin America.
Now that we have seen the types of airline safety videos available to see, let’s ask some questions. Do the airline safety videos nowadays still serve in-flight passengers? Have they, or have they not, sacrifice vital information to make rooms for fun bits in the videos?
Let’s look at some research.
A 2017 study asked participants to watch one standard, concise safety video and one funny, humorous safety video with showy props in a counterbalanced order. The researchers then gave them questionnaire to fill. They found that the funny video captured attention more than the standard one, but there was no difference in recalling vital information in both videos.
A more surprising finding is that the addition of humor seems to have a detrimental effect on passengers’ attentions when watching safety videos in the future. If someone is watching a standard video after they have watched a funny one, they will not pay as much attention to it as they did earlier — meaning, funnier videos are needed to recapture attention.
A very methodologically similar study has the same findings. Furthermore, it also finds that the number one reason passengers do not pay attention to the safety videos are because of boredom with the repetitiveness of such videos. If the message is always the same, why bother?
By the looks of it, there is quite logical that airlines continue making these kinds of videos to keep up with passengers’ expectations. However, another study with the same kind of methods showed that the greater the entertainment value, the poorer the retention of key safety messages.
To answer the questions, I would argue that airline safety videos do still serve passengers. All the safety videos still show all the required elements, even though in some videos the demonstrations are too obscure. With that being said, I think airlines might have unintentionally sacrificed vital information — including the delivery of it — in favor of branding opportunity.
So, is there any effective airline safety video?
The answer depends, not on the video itself but on the viewer. For something to be effective, it needs to have effects on its intended target. Effective airline safety videos would be any video which successfully informs its passengers that they know what to do when the situation requires them to.
Entertaining safety videos can easily grab our attention but does not necessarily make us retain information better. Frequent flyers, however, can use such videos to refresh their memory. On the contrary, boring standard safety videos can turn out to be the most effective for first time flyers. Moreover, there are several factors that determine our reception: language, cognitive ability, hearing and visual ability, among many others.
Lastly, there are effective airline safety videos. Since these kinds of videos have becoming a branding and marketing tools, they are very effective in delivering their brand awareness. These videos are being mentioned, discussed, and shared. All the safety videos I shared in this writing have done their job effectively.
