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

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.