Air France – Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook

Zen and the art of flogging stuff

In the frenzy of creating concepts to an agency deadline, invariably someone will propose a ‘Zen’ execution. Usually this can be attributed to a free-floating miasma of stress, or too much coffee. It is a knee-jerk idea that you see all too often.

This Zen territory (as I call it) has little to do with the school of Mahayana Buddhism, developed in China which spread to Korea, Vietnam and Japan. Instead Zen territory is a comforting vision of meditative, lotus-positioned calm.

Zen – as it filters through to the west – suggests that a quick win of instantaneous enlightenment is sometimes possible. This moment of enlightened insight is called satori, which in Zen stories are often triggered by paradoxical, riddle-like koans such as ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping?’

Marketing is of course not interested in any of this. It is, however, interested in images of tranquility. A perennial stock shot favourite is of someone meditating on a rock before a empty horizon. As weasel creatives, our task is to introduce the reason for this tranquillity, even a spot of yogic flying, that comes from completing a tax return before the deadline… As in this example from 2013.

Of course doing tax returns can trigger all kinds of negative emotions, such as fury, fear and a whimpering dark night of the soul. Images of inner peace can therefore be useful when there is something to be nervous about. Flying often makes me particularly nervous, so when I worked with Air France I could see the wisdom in their brand’s insistence on always showing cloudless blue skies, which seem to promise that on an Air France flight turbulence was improbable at best.

Air France’s creative work derives from the insight that the journey should be an enjoyable part of your trip, not an endurance test. So their executions show people in a reassuringly relaxed frame of mind, such as the example below, full of the dream-like tranquility of first class travel.

Such images show a post-consumer moment, where the characters need nothing other than to be left to their cross-legged enlightenment, with all the pain of making a difficult purchase behind them.

Ah, relax now. Shoulders down. Can’t you just feel the bliss that comes from spending money?

Norwegian Airlines make me think of kittens

Passing through Gatwick Airport last week, I saw a norwegian.com aircraft.

As someone whose responsibility it is to stare fixedly out of the window to prevent an aircraft falling from the sky while aboard, I like anything that helps me reframe the experience of flying.

I have done work with Air France in the past, and their work must only feature empty blue skies, and people in a heavenly state of relaxation. I call this Zen territory. Zen territory has little to do with actual Zen but is shorthand for people looking extremely chilled. The fact is that unless you are forking out for first class the reality of travel is not like this at all. You are not sitting with your feet in a blue pool, looking up at a clear, sunny sky. You are more likely feeling a tad claustrophobic and listening to your inner child asking are we there yet?

What I like about the norwegian.com aircraft is that it proudly proclaims that it has wireless internet on board. It posits a journey where the traveller can “poke friends’ or ‘watch cute cat videos’ or ‘check email’. In short do everyday stuff instead of experiencing the existential terror of being buffeted about miles above terra firma. Give me the kitten videos every time.

The fact that it uses the whole plane to advertise the wifi is interesting. Does it cheapen the brand? I think not. It makes me smile and gave me a positive reason to enjoy my flight with Norwegian.