Air New Zealand’s epic safety video via True, Auckland clocks up 16 million views in one week
With close to 120,000 people viewing it online every hour, Air New Zealand’s latest Hobbit-inspired safety video, The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made, created by True, Auckland, has become the airline’s most popular video to date, clocking up a record 16 million online views within a week of release.
The video stars cast members from all three films in The Hobbit Trilogy including Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins), Dean O’Gorman (Fili the Dwarf) and Sylvester McCoy (Radagast). It also features cameos from The Hobbit Trilogy director Sir Peter Jackson, Weta Workshop co-founder Sir Richard Taylor and the director of the video, Kiwi filmmaker Taika Waititi.
The large-scale viewing of the safety video reflects the fans enthusiasm for the December release of the highly anticipated The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, a production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM).
The video has been viewed by more than eight million viewers on YouTube, six million on Facebook and a further 1.6 million on Youku in China. It has also been featured in numerous media outlets worldwide including CNN, NBC News, the Daily Mail and The Telegraph.
Air New Zealand head of global brand development Jodi Williams says the airline is thrilled by the popularity of the video.
Says Williams: “We set out to make the most epic airline safety video ever to celebrate our three-year partnership with The Hobbit films and the uptake has been just that. The number of people watching it, the feedback from customers and the coverage generated by global media outlets has been outstanding.”
The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made has quickly eclipsed the airline’s first Hobbit-inspired safety video, An Unexpected Briefing (2012) which clocked up more than 12 million global online views.
7 Comments
Just shows how great things can be.
…when you have unlimited money, or own the town. Or both.
@not amazed…
I think you’ll find that the budgets in NZ are teeny tiny compared to the Australian ones. You’d be amazed what we can do in NZ… people have won at Cannes on $60K production budgets.
@onabudget, don’t play the ‘nz tight budget’ card..we are talking about a Peter Jackson production, and he does own the town!!
@not amazed New Zealanders are really good at doing more with less. And mostly too polite to suggest that posts like yours are the work of a fool.
Just want to say something again. This is so fucking good on every level. Please learn.
Let’s just get back to the simple fact that this is awesome.