Employing humour and celebrities to manipulate passengers’ attention to pre-flight safety briefing videos in commercial aviation

Highlights

• Passenger attention to pre-flight safety briefing videos is poor.

• Humour or celebrities are used to improve passenger’ attention to briefings.

• Passengers are less likely to look away when humour is employed in briefings.

• Recall of key safety messages improved with humorous briefings.

Abstract

Passengers’ attention to the pre-flight safety briefing video prior to commercial flights has been described as poor, at best. This has resulted in some airlines employing creative marketing techniques such as using humour or celebrities to improve passenger’ attention to the material. The effectiveness of such techniques remains unknown and therefore was the main aim of the present research. 45 participants were randomly divided into three groups (standard safety video, humorous safety video, and celebrity safety video), and each group were asked to watch a series of videos with the target pre-flight safety briefing video embedded at the end of the video sequence. Eye gaze as well as key safety messages recalled were analysed and compared between groups. The results revealed the humorous pre-flight safety briefing video to be the most effective in maintaining participants’ attention as well as recall of key safety messages. Alarmingly, recall of key safety messages between the three videos averaged fifty per cent, suggesting that the airlines and aviation authorities need to rethink the way in which they convey safety critical information to passengers.

Introduction

For airlines and governing authorities alike, passenger safety remains paramount. For passengers however, there is little evidence of the systems, processes and defences in place to protect them from harm. One obvious safety measure though is the safety briefing provided prior to each flight. For many passengers, the pre-flight safety briefing is considered repetitious and boring (Parker, 2006). For males, and in particular young educated males, paying attention to these safety briefing videos is particularly challenging (Johnson, 1979). This has led some airlines to be creative about the way they deliver the important information in this safety briefing videos (e.g., including humour or celebrities). What remains unknown, and is the central aim of the present research, is the effectiveness of such methods in gaining and maintaining the attention of passengers.

Humour and celebrity endorsements are popular methods employed by advertising professionals to market products or services (Madden and Weinberger, 1982, Banyte et al., 2011). Humour is primarily useful in obtaining the attention of the target audience (Sternthal and Craig, 1973, Speck, 1991). Celebrities on the other hand are most beneficial in persuading (i.e., selling) the opinion of the viewer (Wang et al., 2013). If either is used inappropriately, the marketing advantage of employing one or the other could be lost.

While humour in advertising has repeatedly been shown to positively affect attention, primarily because the humorous message is perceived as more interesting (Stewart and Furse, 1986), if employed at the wrong time, it can disrupt the processing of the target message (Smith, 1993). Chan (2011) found precisely this when he tested five different advertisements (2 humorous, 2 non-humorous and 1 neutral) with 254 university students. The humorous ads were successful in gaining the attention of the students however, their ability to persuade the students was inferior to the ads without humour.

The effectiveness of celebrities in advertising is underpinned by the public's fascination and obsession with sport personalities and movie stars (Mehta, 1999). Spry et al. (2011) contend that it is often the attractiveness and credibility of these celebrities that gain the attention of the general public. Advertisers then heighten these traits (i.e., influence the image and identification of the celebrity) and link them to the product being marketed. For this to be most effective, it is best to carefully select the celebrity, matching the target segment and brand values with the features of the celebrity (McCracken, 1989, Mukherjee, 2012). Failure to do so, or choosing a celebrity who is not widely known can result in consumers not being attracted to the advertisement (Wang et al., 2013).

For airlines wanting to attract and engage passengers in the safety briefing, employing humour or celebrities would appear to make good sense. Molesworth (2014) found precisely this when he tested the effectiveness of three different commercially available pre-flight safety briefing videos (no humour, humour, and celebrity), in terms of memorability of key safety messages. Moreover, participants who watched a safety briefing video which employed either humour or a celebrity recalled more key safety messages than participants who watched a safety briefing that was devoid of the two. While these results are encouraging, they leave open this important issue about attention and how humour or the use of celebrities in such briefings affects individuals’ attention to this information. Therefore, the main aim of the present research was to examine the effectiveness of three pre-flight safety briefing, each employing a different marketing technique such as no humour, humour or a celebrity, to answer the following questions.

• Does the method in which safety related information is delivered affect passengers’ attention to this information?

• Does the method in which safety related information is delivered affect passengers’ recall of safety information?

• Does the impact of prior exposure to another airline’s safety briefing affect participants’ recall of key safety information?

• Do gender and age affect participants’ decision to attend to the pre-flight safety briefing?