Safety Videos Get Cheeky

By now you have probably seen the much-talked-about (with 4 million hits on YouTube) Air New Zealand safety video performed by real Air NZ staffers wearing nothing but body paint.

(Apparently we liked it so much we posted it on both the Unusual Attitude and Asian Skies blogs.)

The latest cheeky safety video comes from Thomson Airways in the UK and is narrated entirely by children pretending to be the flight attendants.



But the Thomson video is not all fun and giggles. As Travel Daily News reports:

Conducting its own research into the merits of the new and improved safety video, Thomson found that there was a:
- 15% increase in the number of passengers who paid full attention to the video;
- 66% increase in the number of passengers who felt that the new film made them feel more safe;
- 333% growth in the number of passengers who engaged with the video; and
- 91% increase in the number of children under the age of 12 who watched the entire video until the end.

On a related note, there is an article somewhere on the internet with a quote from Sir Richard Branson saying how Virgin Atlantic had to fight UK regulators to let it use an animated safety video. Virgin claims animated (and witty) safety videos hold passengers' attention better. Does anyone else remember this article?

These safety videos are fun to watch, but as a passenger do you think you would find yourself paying closer attention to the safety procedures, or would you be distracted?