Air India’s new safety video has the right moves – ET BrandEquity

You’ve found your airline seat, stowed your bag and are set for the flight — but wait, there’s a Bharatnatyam dancer showing you how to fasten your seatbelt, with graceful mudras.

Air India recently unveiled its ‘Safety Mudras’ campaign to make airline safety instructions more engaging — that part of the flight that invariably makes passengers tune out.

But this beautiful inflight video marries safety with India’s classical and folk dances. The ad, conceptualised by Prasoon Joshi, chairman of McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific and CEO and CCO of McCann Worldgroup India; singer Shankar Mahadevan; and filmmaker Bharatbala, has already clocked five million YouTube views (and counting) since it dropped on February 23.

A story through dance

“Indian dance forms just lend themselves to telling stories,” Joshi tells Brand Equity, “Take ‘Kathak’, for instance. The word comes from ‘katha’ which means ‘story’.” Part of Air India’s brief for the ad was to give its passengers a “warm welcome to India from the moment they step onboard”, according to Campbell Wilson, CEO and MD, Air India, describing the film as a “work of art”. The airline brief was to have a safety video that was both immersive and informative.

Cultural connect

The video unfolds with an Air India cabin crew member welcoming a little girl, who peeks through the Air India ‘Vista’ — the brand’s signature golden window frame — to see a cultural spectacle unfold before her. Bharatnatyam, Odissi, Kathakali, Mohiniyattam, Kathak, Bihu, Ghoomar and Gidda dancers then gracefully take her through the safety instructions — right from correctly securing seatbelts and tray tables to wearing life jackets and the deployment of oxygen masks.

“The challenge was to create a concept that keeps travellers engaged with the message in an innovative manner, while keeping the brand values of a global airline with an Indian heart intact,” says Joshi, discussing the thought process and crediting Kamal Basu (business head for Air India at McCann Worldgroup) and Sambit Mohanty’s (creative head, McCann Worldgroup) for their “exceptional vision”. Marc Koninckx, director of photography, and choreographer Brinda Master, were part of bringing the film to life, featuring real dancers and not models, though the decision to feature only female dancers wasn’t intentional.

Globally, airlines have been using attention-grabbing inflight videos. In 2014, Air New Zealand made ‘The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made’ to celebrate the third and final film in The Hobbit trilogy. Then there’s Qantas, which, in its centenary year 2020, created a flight safety video that gave viewers a peek into the brand’s history. Malaysia Airlines’s #SatuDuaTigaJom embodied Malaysian culture in a super catchy music video in 2022.

“In today’s complex media landscape, you can’t just be dependant on ads to become part of popular culture. Every piece of content you create has an opportunity to connect with our audience,” says Joshi.