My recent talk with Daniela the Flight Girl spurred my nostalgia about what flying was like back in the day. I remember those Mad Men episode with Don Draper was winging it to the coast with Roger Sterling with the suit coats still buttoned and stewardess with gloves on taking drink orders.

Today is a little different, right? You know the drill, show up three hours early, get frisked by TSA, beg for an upgrade (or pay a fortune for business class), and share sodas with your seat mates. So, what was it like when airline travel became a romanticized mode of transportation? I’ll tell you, it was smokey, dangerous, boozy, expensive, boring, racist, and sexist.

Expensive Tickets

In the fifties, a roundtrip ticket from Los Angeles to Chicago would set you back about $1,200 in today’s dollars (when adjusted for inflation). A one-way trip to Rome would have cost you $3,000!

Smoking

During the fifties, smoking (cigarettes, pipes and cigars) was acceptable (and to a large degree encourages) in flight. However, you couldn’t smoke in the terminal. Senior management at the airlines and the FAA were deathly (pun intended) afraid that fuel fumes could be ignited. Reform came in 1988 when smoking was prohibited on short domestic flights. In 2000, a new law banned smoking on all flights department from and inbound to the United States.

Baggage Claim

Back in the day, you would wait for a skycap to organize the luggage and after that laborious process, you would point our your suitcase and tip the man.

Lots of Drinking

Mile High Club aside, the only in-flight entertainment used to be alcohol. Everyone was served as much free alcohol as they could handle. And not handle. It was pretty common to disembark the plane totally hammered.

No ID Needed

Even as late as the nineties, you could board a plane with only your ticket. Showing up at the airport a few minutes before your flight was the perfect pre-flight timing, you didn’t take off your shoes, belt or hat, and your girlfriend could walk you to the gate to make sure you were going to where you said you were.

Danger!

In the Golden Age of Flying, your chances of dying were five times greater than today (and a patch of turbulence could snap your neck). Nice-looking dividers separated first class from coach. The only drawback was that they could shatter and spray you with glass during turbulence. Walking to the bathroom could be fatal. Trip and you could find yourself landing on a sharp edge or jag of a chair or table. Safety was not a priority once upon a time.

AD OF THE WEEK/MONTH/WHATEVER

In the sixties, sex sold everything. Today, you’d be called a misogynists or Donal Trump. I’ve detailed the AirStrip campaign quite a few times in the quasi-pages of the Media Guy Struggles. For those of you that missed it read the story. I’m excited to write that I finally found the vintage television spot.

In the commercial, a “hostess” (a new term coined by the advertising folks) casually strips off layers of her Emilio Pucci uniform to classic stripper music while the dominating male voiceover narrator uses not-so-subtle sexual innuendo to describe her action. Note the concluding tag line:

“The AirStrip is brought to you by Braniff International, who believe that even an airline hostess should look like a girl.”

See for yourself…

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It pains me to do this critique. I’ve flown Emirates Airlines many times and love their business class services and economy class entertainment. But really, their print advertising has crossed over and jumped the shark.

Mary Wells, architect of the Braniff “End of the Plain Plane” ad campaign, is certainly sitting in her French villa chuckling over these ads. (Well, at least I would be…)

Ever since Braniff shocked the airline industry when Wells introduced the new International image for the airlines, the ad industry has been trying to match that impact.

For many of you reading who don’t know the story, Braniff introduced a new multi-colored fleet with technicolor cabins and exteriors in 1965. The campaign extended all the way to uniforms with stewardesses (that’s what they were called back then – hey, don’t shoot the messenger!) performing their notorious “AirStrip” where they would actually take layers of their uniform off as the flight progressed. Wells was pretty awesome. A “mad woman” of sorts. A genius that created the “Plop-plop-fizz-fizz,” “I Love New York,” and “Flic My Bic” campaigns. She set the standard for advertising innovation. In her book, A Big Life In Advertising, Wells detailed how this campaign was literally rescued from the circular file when desperation struck for that big idea.

The AirStrip? Yes, that’s real.

The trash bin leads to an interesting transition to the Emirates “Hello Tomorrow” campaign courtesy of StrawberryFrog and Scott Goodson, the agency’s creative genius.

Full disclosure once again. Who the #*%$ am I to critique these ads? StrawberryFrog has like a kajillion dollars in ad revenues. I’m just your run-of-the-mill Media Guy with an armful of shiny trophies and some great bar stories to show from my career (well, maybe more).

When Goodson was asked how he came with the campaign he said, “A great set of words – like Hello Tomorrow – point to an interesting dichotomy, which leads to dynamic advertising and game-changing ideas. The campaign needed to go way beyond conventional airline advertising. It needed to rally thousands of employees in the worlds fastest growing companies, make a statement about the future that would be heard by global travelers.”

Hmmmmmm…game-changing ideas…

Let’s jump into some of the ads and see what’s game-changing and what’s not.

REACTION: WTF? Did the copywriters have a diversity checklist?:

“Yeah, uh Bob, do we have hipster guy with a knit cap?”
“Yep, check!”
“A woman who looks equally part Latina and part black?”
“Yep, check!”
“An Asian woman?”
“Yep, check!”
“An Irish/Caucasian-looking redheaded woman?”
“Yep, check!”
“A German woman?”
“Yep, check!”
“A very African woman?”
“Yep, all set!”

C’mon…I thought the days of no-two-people-of-the-same-race-can-be-in-an-ad-together were gone! What about that great no-aisle, six across seating plan they have working here? I bet that even said “we can sound extra international and intelligent if we spell ‘flavor’ the English way and add the ‘u.’ Yeah that’s a great idea.

REACTION: Bed head or electrocution? Seriously? And who wears green sweats with a yellow cardigan and a burgundy blouse in business class anymore? What a nightmare.

REACTION: I don’t believe the two women in the ad are even dancing. I can only assume that they are channeling their inner OutKast and were caught throwing “their arms in the air and waving them like they just don’t care.” But honestly, I don’t need to go clubbing in Dubai when the LA and Vegas clubs do the trick nicely. As a matter of fact, wouldn’t anything in Dubai — the indoor skiing, the Burj Al Arab, or even the Gold Souk — be something you want to do over clubbing? All of this begs the question: were either of these women even in motion?

REACTION: Look, I don’t mean to keep pooping on their ads, but what in the living hell just happened to the first class cabin? Everything Emirates Airlines shows seems to be this exercise in avant-garde misrepresentation. On who’s authority was this guy allowed to get hammered on premium bourbon and then whip out his saxophone to jam Charlie Parker style? So if this isn’t even remotely going to happen then why is it in the ad? If you were suffering in economy, how long would it take you to steal a bottle of wine from the beverage cart and beat that instrument into a pile of brass?

REACTION: I certainly hope all of this remixing isn’t happening during take-off or landing? And, did this intrepid DJ purchase an extra $5500 business class ticket just to do an emergency mix for a wedding in the U.A.E.? However you slice it, it’s a assault on the poor schlub in economy (again)…like coach-bound Renee Zellweger told her son in Jerry Maguire, “First class, that’s what’s wrong. It used to be a better meal, now it’s a better life.” Yeah you had me at Hello Tomorrow.

REACTION: Why is it that the caucasian is sheltering the Indian woman from the rain and not the other way around? And, the guy in the left in the foreground is covering his head with a newspaper. I mean who reads a newspaper anymore? Why is it that only two out of the seven people in this ad had an umbrella? Was it a flash storm? A gift from the heavens to alleviate draught? I don’t know about you, but the last five hotels I stayed at had a complimentary umbrella to use during my stay. The only thing game changing about this ad is the pantheon level of absurdity it delivers.

REACTION: Do you really think the woman to the left of this poor man’s Hugh Hefner in the smoking jacket is going to be all smiles asking him why he chose chicken cordon bleu over the filet mignon. No, Rico Suave…she’s going to ask the flight attendant to move her away. 

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