Ads Aloft

Courting an airborne audience

Just before the movie begins aboard long-haul flights on American, Braniff and Northwest, a ten-minute, highly professional film flashes on the screen. Titled World on Parade, it appears at first glance to be a 1940s-style newsreel. Passengers listening through their earphones hear a solemn-voiced narrator describe dramatic scenes of F-14 fighters landing on a Navy aircraft carrier. But then comes the soft sell: those are Grumman planes. Other World on Parade segments have included a mini-tour of a Chrysler factory where robots help assemble K-cars and a message for Krugerrands showing how gold was used in the Apollo spacecraft that flew astronauts to the moon. Also featured are nature sequences starring chimpanzees, reindeer, geese and kangaroos.

This new form of advertising for the airline audience was created by Trans Global Films of New York City. Corporate sponsors pay $35,000 for the production of a one-minute commercial shown on flights over a one-month period. In addition to U.S. carriers, several foreign airlines, including British Airways, Lufthansa and Iberia, will soon screen the ads. Trans Global characterizes its flying commercials as "sponsored entertainment" with news and educational value. World on Parade is institutional advertising, designed not to sell a specific product (Who after all needs an F-14?) but to enhance a corporate image.

Eastern Air Lines, working with a Miami-based company called In-Flight Communications, has begun an advertising program that makes no such claim. Eastern on many flights has shown one-minute ads for Lanier dictating equipment and the familiar Hertz television film clip of O.J. Simpson flying like Superman through the air toward his rent-a-car.

After suffering its worst year on record in 1980, the airline industry may look to the ads as a new source of income. The commercials have already boosted the revenues of Eastern, for example, by $20,000 a month.

So far, passenger reaction has been generally positive, although Film Critic Judith Crist was annoyed enough to send American Airlines an indignant protest letter. Said she: "I was shocked to be subjected to a commercial disguised as a news feature." But American contends that of some 1.5 million travelers who have seen World on Parade, only twelve have objected to the high-altitude pitches.

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