When Airline Safety Videos Became Better Than Actual Movies
Somewhere between the emergency exits and oxygen masks, airlines started producing Oscar-worthy safety videos. Not just tolerable. Genuinely, please-shut-up-I’m-watching-this good. Air New Zealand led the charge back in the day with their Hobbit-themed epics, and now in 2025, it’s spiraled into a unexpected branding war at 36,000 feet. I watched five airline safety videos last weekend. Voluntarily. It wasn’t research. It was fascination.
There’s a new one from Qatar that feels like a Wes Anderson fever dream. Pastel luggage, symmetrical crew choreography, vague philosophical voiceover. I don’t know how to fasten a life vest any better, but I do know someone’s hiring art directors with Cannes ambitions. Even Qantas has dropped the sleepy outback montages for a glossy, almost TikTok-like rhythm. Rhythmic snack carts, tight jump cuts. I counted three drone shots and a cameo from a soap opera star I thought was dead. They aren’t. Neither is creativity at cruising altitude.
What’s strange is how disconnected it all is from the usual brand mandate. You’re not meant to remember a safety video. You’re meant to survive it. But here we are, in an arms race of cinematic overachievement where airlines craft short films that outshine Hollywood trailers. There’s a lesson in here for marketers: mandated content is not a prison, it's a pressure cooker. No choice but to watch, so why not blow it up with sparkle?
Airlines cracked it. Beauty under constraint. Now the challenge is, how do the rest of us bottle that? What’s the branding equivalent of a seatbelt light? What’s your captive audience moment? If you figure that out, you’re halfway to making something people don’t just endure, but actually want to see again.
There’s a new one from Qatar that feels like a Wes Anderson fever dream. Pastel luggage, symmetrical crew choreography, vague philosophical voiceover. I don’t know how to fasten a life vest any better, but I do know someone’s hiring art directors with Cannes ambitions. Even Qantas has dropped the sleepy outback montages for a glossy, almost TikTok-like rhythm. Rhythmic snack carts, tight jump cuts. I counted three drone shots and a cameo from a soap opera star I thought was dead. They aren’t. Neither is creativity at cruising altitude.
What’s strange is how disconnected it all is from the usual brand mandate. You’re not meant to remember a safety video. You’re meant to survive it. But here we are, in an arms race of cinematic overachievement where airlines craft short films that outshine Hollywood trailers. There’s a lesson in here for marketers: mandated content is not a prison, it's a pressure cooker. No choice but to watch, so why not blow it up with sparkle?
Airlines cracked it. Beauty under constraint. Now the challenge is, how do the rest of us bottle that? What’s the branding equivalent of a seatbelt light? What’s your captive audience moment? If you figure that out, you’re halfway to making something people don’t just endure, but actually want to see again.