Flying Finns score a YouTube hit – even if the idea is a trifle hackneyed
There is a long and glorious history of airlines getting their staff to do odd things on-board in order to create YouTube “sensations”.
Air New Zealand stripped their crew and then body-painted them to get people clicking – around 6 million of them promptly did just that. Cebu Pacific managed to cause a stir – amid allegations of sexism – when they had their female air crew dancing their safety instructions. Their response was to record the same thing with a bunch of chaps.
Now, FinnAir has followed this well-trodden path with a lot of Scandiwegians putting on a Bollywood show at 30,000 feet …
Now I have always been one for new ideas and creating things that are truly one-off, ownable and that generate real stand-out.
But what this shows is that sometimes, a new riff on the tried-and-tested mechanic can pay dividends from a coverage and a viral point-of-view.
What’s more, the thing that really got me about this story was the way that it’s been sold.
Clearly, there was a bunch of seeding that took place to launch the clip.
But where it’s actually picked up its coverage has been in the story of the sensation that it has created – rather than in the clip itself. The fact that it has racked up over two million views is the one that has made.
A great deployment of the “this is already massive, look, you need to write about it” trick. As ever, the media has fallen for this one in their droves: showing once again that no one loves a “phenomenon” more than a great British tabloid …
This article was first published on PR Moment. But we thought that we would put it up here too. Just in case anyone missed it, I guess
