Airlines’ safety instructions, initially a technical and cold message broadcasted in the aircraft, have become over time a communication and marketing toolfor their brand identity that is widely shared on social networks.
This is a “light” matter, but one that the community of air travel fans likes to follow, more or less successful, let’s admit it.
The latest avatar of the genre comes fromBrussels Airlines, a rather discreet airline in general. What makes them special? If the airline wrote the lyrics, it gave total freedom to the Belgian band Hooverphonic to put them to music. The result is very pleasant to listen to and aesthetically not bad at all, shot like a real video clip.
It is very common today for an airline to rely on both the sound track and the aesthetics for its safety instructions. However what Brussels Airlines has done is quite original.
Some play the musical card (like Malaysia Airlines recently), have staged artists or celebrities (such as Turkish Airlines with Morgan Freeman or Air New Zealand with All Blacks players and an intervention of Rick Hoffman who played Louis Litt in the series Suits) but to our knowledge none of them has has the text performed by real well-known artists and even less gave them complete freedom to set the text to music and images.
Air France has also recently made its new brand film with a soundtrack performed by Juliette Armanet, who is much more confidential and it was a brand film, not a safety film. On the other hand, his interpretation of Les Moulins de Mon Coeur by Michel Legrand makes it possible to watch and listen to the film over and over again without getting bored.
Pour en revenir à Brussels Airlines, quitte à exploiter le concept au maximum, ils ne se sont pas limités à plaquer la bande son sur des images mais sont restés dans l’esprit de faire la vidéo clip de la chanson ainsi réalisée et cela donne au tout une certaine originalité et une vraie cohérence.
As creative as they are, not all safety instructions are successful. Here, both musically and aesthetically we validate what Brussels Airlines has done. And they had the intelligence to call upon a Belgian band to embody the national culture with style but without overdoing it and falling, like others, in caricature.
Small digression to finish, this video was for me the occasion to remember the excellent Mad About You that I listened in loop more than twenty years ago.
Thank you Brussels Airline.
