United - Fly like a superhero

The latest in the ongoing series of infotainment style Airline Safety Videos comes from United. The US Airline has produced a video in partnership with Sony Pictures to mark the forthcoming release of “Spider-Man: Far from home.”

The video has a similar look and feel to the last United Safety Video, “Safety is Global,” complete with a cameo by the airline’s boss Oscar Munoz.

Airline flight attendants talk through safety features in various real world / non aircraft locations - e.g. a delicatessen, a park, and of course a cinema.

However, while the locations in Safety is Global matched various United destinations, here they relate to places featured in the new Spiderman film.

The video also has cameos from characters in the movie. E.g. ‘Spiderman’ uses his web in the different safety demonstrations, while Peter Parkers’s best friend ‘Ned’, is seen with Oscar Munoz outside a movie theatre.

From June, the collaboration with Sony Pictures is extending to United customers in the premium ‘Polaris’ cabin receiving a themed Spiderman amenity kit.

This will feature branded products including an eye mask, socks, tissues, ear plugs, a toothbrush and a pen alongside luxury skincare products, designed exclusively for United customers.

Frequent flyer MilieagePlus members are also able to bid award miles to attend the Spider-Man: Far From Home premiere in Los Angeles on June 26.

Other airline movie collaborations

United is of course not the first airline to havecollaborated with a studio on a movie release, otherexamples include:

British Airways and Heathrow Airport

ran a campaign around the launch of the Queen / FreddieMercury Movie, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, honouring the fact thatMercury was once a baggage handler at Heathrow.

This included a special video where baggage handlers performed “I want to break free”, and various stunts under the heading of “Freddie for a Day.”

For example the arrivals boards at Heathrow Terminal Five, were changed to look like Queen songs (e.g. BA 1977 arriving from ‘We will rock you’ - the song was of course released in 1977).

(This campaign was our October 2018 cover story)

Last year Turkish Airlines released a Lego Movies themed Safety Video, with the Lego versions of Batman, Wonderwoman and Superman starring.

In 2016, Hawaiian Airlines launched aninternational marketing campaign to coincide with the release of the Hawaiian themed Disney movie “Moana.”

In 2013, American Airlines worked withDisney on the animated film “Planes’, under which American Airlines was able to show the movie on its in-flight entertainment system a month before other airlines.

A number of airlines have developed campaignsaround the Star Wars series of films.

Most notably, ANA painted a 787-Dreamliner in R2D2 livery to mark the release of ‘The Force Awakens’ in 2015, while earlier this year, United painted a 737 in Star Wars colours in anticipation of the upcoming movie, “The Rise of Skywalker.”

Finally, to promote Amazon and JetBlue’s partnership,

where Amazon Prime entertainment is available on-board JetBlueflights, the airline worked with Amazon in setting up a pop up cinemabooth at JFK.

According to Campaign magazine, brand ambassadors gave out ticketsto passengers, which included the chance to win prizes such as Kindles.

What’s the benefit of an airline teaming up with a movie studio? Will it sell more flightand / or cinema tickets? In the latter case maybe, in the former case, it’s unlikely.

However, with the on-going safety video challenge around who can make the funniest / most different / most talked about and (importantly) most watched safety video, it’s a way of getting your creation to stand out by giving it some star power.

At the same time, producing special themed merchandise, for example, with the Spiderman amenity kits in United’s Polaris cabins, will have a lot of value as these will very quickly become collectors’ items.

Meanwhile actually painting your aircraft in special movie themed colours, as both ANA and United did with Star Wars, works from a PR and brand awareness point of view, as these aircraft tend to be photographed extensively with the pictures shared across social media.