(Source: New York Times & Air New Zealand)

Image Courtesy: Air New Zealand Website

Let us admit. Most of us don’t listen to those mundane sfaety instructions videos shown to us in the airplanes.  A lot of us simply ignore it knowing that it is same damn thing that we have heard umpteen times. Borrrrringgg!!  Not anymore.  Virgin America attempted to change this with its wonderfully creative pre-flight safety video shown before on their Airbus A320 airliners.

Now, Air New Zealand, already known for its innvoative marketing ideas has  done one better than Virgin America  with a safety video featuring its employees who are nude except for body paint and strategically placed seat belts.

Passengers on the video’s maiden flight Monday — the 7 a.m. from Auckland to Wellington, on New Zealand’s North Island — may have never paid more rapt attention to the line “undo the seat belt by lifting the metal flap.”

The video (shown below) — and a related ad campaign — are rare moments of levity in an industry that has been savaged by drastic drop-offs in passenger travel and air freight. Airlines around the world, including Air New Zealand, have had to cut flights, employees and investment plans.

The video and commercial are not as revealing as some might think (or perhaps hope, given the toned bodies of the employees). The realistic body paint makes it look as if the employees — flight attendants, baggage handlers and a pilot — are wearing uniforms. The one perThe video and commercial are not as revealing as some might think (or perhaps hope, given the toned bodies of the employees). The realistic body paint makes it look as if the employees — flight attendants, baggage handlers and a pilot — are wearing uniforms. The one person not shown doing his actual job is the company’s buff chief executive, Rob Fyfe, who plays a baggage handler.

The point of the three-and-a-half-minute safety video and the 45-second commercial that started running last month is that unlike other airlines, which increasingly add hidden charges to fares in an effort to increase falling revenue, Air New Zealand has nothing to hide.

“Which is why the price you pay includes everything — up front,” reads the ad’s tag line.

Click here to read the entire article.

TransportGooru Musing: I’d love to fly Air New Zealand and write a column about how their service matches against these sweet ad campaigns.  Also,  I am falling hard for Air New Zealand’s pleasant ambassadors  (read as hostesses, oohh lala)  with their accented “Kyora” (for those who don’t know what that means, it is the traditional Maori greeting).  Someone, please, tell Air New Zealand to give me a free ticket!  Mr. Rob Fyfe, are you listening??