Introduction to Public Relations - Air New Zealand' safety video PR Audit

(a) public relations product details

Air New Zealand is not only well-known for its first-class aviation services but also notorious for its long history of producing “quirky” safety videos (Platt, 2018). On November 6th 2018, the airline released its largest scale safety video called It’s Kiwi Safety, whose soundtrack paid homage to the popular songs “It’s Tricky” and “In the Neighbourhood” (Air New Zealand, 2018a). This star-studded safety video featured several local celebrities including famous actor Julian Dennison, musicians Kings, Theia and Randa, many talents from 30 community groups, and Air New Zealanders (Air New Zealand, 2018a). The release of its safety video was made on the airline’s official website, Facebook, and Twitter. It received much media coverage, including the local media coverage from New Zealand Herald, Stuff, to international press attention from CNN, Independent UK, and so on.

(b) audit of message

Air New Zealand did not fail to manage and cultivate its relationship with the publics through its media release called “Air New Zealand launches Kiwi-as safety video”.The media release was tailored for Air New Zealand’s target publics: the frequent flyer passengers of the airline and its potential passengers (Appendix 1)

First and foremost, the media release successfully conveyed the cognitive aims of the message to its publics. In line with Jodi Williams from Air New Zealand’ statement, the safety video was to promote the “unique Kiwi culture to the world" (Air New Zealand, 2018). Therefore, the media release aimed to make the target publics believe in the fact that Air New Zealand was a first-class airline that could offer the best infrastructure and services for its passengers and New Zealand and its people were diversely unique as illustrated in the video.

Second, according to Chance (cited in Martin, 2018), if the safety video could trigger a few chuckles, the passengers might associate the airline with good feelings. Because of the airline’s affective attempts to make its interactions with the publics through the catchy and impressive audio and visualisation, it could gradually instil a positive feeling in the target publics (Ki and Hon, 2008).

Third, the media release attached a link to the safety video on the airline’s YouTube channel for the target publics’ convenience. Besides, the target publics could access to the airline’s email address, phone number, and Twitter account in the media release, which was the essential step in the relationship cultivation of the airline (Ki and Hon, 2008). Especially, as the safety video’s behavioural aims were to showcase the airline’s first-class infrastructure and services, it could build the trust of the publics in the airline, thus, encouraged them to take actions by flying frequently (Morgan and Natt, 2012).

In general, although the message set out with all three distinct aims, related to cognitive, affective, and behavioural, the actual effectiveness of the message was not high. Firstly, although the message could catch its publics’ attention as it was personally relevant to the publics, it merely provided instructions without emphasising in any particular information; hence, no actual involvement recognition by the targets could be witnessed (Ledingham and Bruning, 1998). Also, the message delivered in the safety video suggested in details about what the target publics should do when on board and in cases of emergencies. However, it did not enable the target publics to focus on the main instructions to take actions to follow. Nevertheless, the message delivered was memorable because it considered the importance of safety, which was the first criteria chosen by many passengers when booking flights (Munro, 2018). Overall, the message was not highly effective as it did not show insightful concerns about the interests both mutually shared between the airline and its publics, which would be further discussed in the next part of the analysis.

Considering the alignment of content to Air New Zealand’s channels, including Twitter and Facebook, some improvements should be made for the message in the media release to be further aligned. The content on both Facebook and Twitter did not highlight the main message of the media release, which was to provide the target publics with general background information regarding the airline’s newly launched safety video. While the main message of the content should have focused on the safety video itself like what was stated in the media release, the message on Facebook and Twitter actually shifted the focus on the celebrities featured in the video and the raps they delivered instead of the message about safety that the video tried to convey.

The message conveyed on the airline’s official website, Facebook, and Twitter about the new safety video of Air New Zealand could be considered rather creative. The media release was written to highlight the interesting aspects of its new video: its high quality production, its involvement of many local celebrities and community groups, its aims to showcase the natural beauty of the country. Also, the media release mentioned the airline’s prior success in drawing 157 million views worldwide to its videos, which could make the target publics more curious about what the airline could offer this time through its safety video (Air New Zealand, 2018a). Also, in its Facebook and Twitter’ s content, the airline successfully harnessed the power of celebrity endorsement and hashtags to reach more of its current and potential passengers. Especially, the safety video itself was creative as it incorporated interesting features of visualisation and audio, which made the experience of watching it enjoyable.

(c) amplification of message

The PR products about Air New Zealand’ s safety video resulted in the amplification of message, both in media coverage and in digital platforms. On the one hand, the news article on Independent by Coffey (2018) was one of the articles that talked about the release of Air New Zealand’ safety video (Appendix 4). While the message in the media release of the airline aimed to inform the target publics about its new safety video by highlighting its high quality execution and educational safety instructions, this news article in the Independent only quoted the statement of the airline in the later part of the article. The article amplified the message with a rather negative tone, with the only first other half of the article focusing on one short sentence to briefly introduce the safety video, and then quoting the disappointment of MP Shane Jones towards the video (Coffey, 2018). Therefore, the aim of organisational message was not translated clearly in this news article as this article showed both negative opinions, from the New Zealand MP, and positive opinions, from the airline itself, about the new safety video.

The headline of the news article read “AIR NEW ZEALAND RAP SAFETY VIDEO IS ‘CRINGE’ ACCORDING TO KIWI MP SHANE JONES”. While the original headline in the media release only gave informative guidance for the target audience which focused on the release of the video, the headline framed by the journalist was written with from a personal perspective of a person, with a trace of negativity. The journalist in this article made use of additional sources from both the New Zealand MP Shane Jones’ statement and the airline’s official media release. As the article used the negative quote from New Zealand MP, who was highly respected in the society, the target publics could have been affected by the opinions of him. For someone who had not viewed the safety video before, it was highly likely that he or she would not have wanted to see the video or would have viewed the video in a negative light.

On the other hand, the amplification of the airline’s public relations product also resulted in comments and sharing via digital platforms, particularly Twitter. Under the original post about the launch of its new safety video, the airline received 113 comments, 270 retweets, and 945 shares up to now (Air New Zealand, 2018b). On the one hand, there were some positive comments about the video.

As illustrated, there were different opinions about the message that Air New Zealand tried to convey through the video. The dividing nature of the comments resulted in a gap between the airline’s performance and the target publics’ concerns. While the interests of Air New Zealand was to promote the airline’s infrastructure, New Zealand’s landscapes, culture, and people to gain publicity for the organisation and gain trust from existing frequent flyers and potential passengers, the target publics’ interests were about being clearly informed of safety instructions on board to follow suit and enjoying their experience with New Zealand’s culture and people when flying with the airline. Therefore, the amplification of message resulted via Twitter was not effective due to the imbalance in mutual interests (Schiopoiu Burlea and Popa, 2013).

Hence, the airline should clearly identify and monitor these comments made by the target publics to map consequences and resources in and around it and monitor the changes of perception consequently (Kim, Ni, and Sha, 2008). However, Air New Zealand individually responded only to the positive comments. They did not try to address the concerns made by the target publics in other negative or neutral comments. Hence, they failed to focus on the relationships with its target publics and communicate involvement to build the relationship (Ledingham and Bruning, 1998). Later in February this year, Air New Zealand post a job opening opportunity to find a Head of Safety Videos. While it celebrated the massive success of its safety video, it humorously accepted the negativity from the comments twice about its prior safety video in this post (Air New Zealand, 2019). However, no official statement addressing the concerns of the target publics was released up to now.

(d) recommendations

Overall, there are some recommendations that the airline could take in consideration of a sustainable relationship with its target publics.

In terms of the media release, content-wise, the airline could have further elaborated on how its safety video was of importance for the target publics when learning more safety instructions, rather than just focusing many impressive aspects about the production of the video, including the soundtrack, the strong cast of celebrities, and its phenomenon on social media. According to the situational theory of public (Kim and Krishna, 2014), the airline should have focused on raising the awareness about the danger of not complying to the safety rules as a problem recognition.

In terms of its content on Twitter and Facebook, the airline should have also mentioned more about the safety aspect in the video, for example, how helpful the video could be to learn more about safety instructions in an entertaining way. By providing the target publics with a brief synopsis on what the content could be about, the airline could spark their interest in the video and that they would want to watch it (Hoben, 2018).

Also, the safety video’s quality could have been improved. First, the airline should have used embedded subtitles as Blind Citizens NZ president Dr Jonathan Godfrey expressed concerns by saying that the reliance on visual cues for blind passengers, novice travellers, or people whose English was not a native language was a must, especially when the lyrics were not “enunciated clearly” (Kelly-Costello, 2018). Furthermore, the video was more than four minutes long with many distracting audios and entertainment elements; therefore, it could be hard for the target publics to identify key messages about safety. Thus, the video’s message should have been concise and straightforward as it could help the airline achieve predetermined goals or objectives (Austin & Pinkleton, 2015).