Various Airlines - Mannequin Challenge

Various Airlines - Mannequin Challenge

By now everyone has heard of the Mannequin Challenge. A little over a month ago it kicked off when a group of Florida teenagers filmed themselves standing still like statues and it spread from there on social media. Following that, everyone from Sprite to Hillary Clinton got involved, and needless to say airlines haven’t been immune to the trend either.

Here is a selection of airlines that took part:

Virgin Atlantic had a crew and passengers ‘frozen’ in mid flight, take a look at the ‘mile high’ couple emerging from the bathroom , Etihad used actual mannequins , while Emirates did their challenge around an A380 in a hangar, the video of which has been viewed 145,000 times . Ryanair turned passengers in a Dublin departure gate into mannequins , Scoot filmed a Qingdao to Singapore flight while Garuda got a whole business class cabin involved. A nice touch here was that passengers and crew were filmed before the challenge as well as during it . However among the many aviation industry efforts, several are worth noting. Denver managed to showcase the whole airport from check-in to departures . Air Asia filmed its mannequin challenge at its corporate HQ, where even boss Tony Fernandes took part , while Singapore Airlines stands out for producing a film at Madame Tussauds Singapore - make sure to watch it all the way to the end.

When a craze like this comes along the question is of course should you do this, especially when the amount of noise makes it difficult to get any cut-through. On balance the answer is: If you can, yes. It humanises you as a brand and shows you to be a ‘good sport’. It gets staff and passengers involved. It allows people to come across your video when doing general searches around the trend. It shows you are current and on the ball. You’ll get PR value from it, as journalists write articles on the trend. And if you can think of a way of doing it a little bit differently like Singapore Airlines did, so much the better!