Air Canada and a new Celine Dion video — right here!

Watching TV over the last couple of days, I couldn't help but notice the new Air Canada adverts, with soundtrack from Celine Dion. Ms. Dion — as I reported last month for CTV National News — is the new voice of Air Canada's marketing campaign. In addition to a new marketing campaign, Air Canada unveiled new uniforms for their employees, some new amenities on some aircraft, and a new logo and colour for their jets.

The song is called “You and I” and you hear it during Air Canada ads. Mind you, you don't see Ms. Dion in the TV adverts. You will, however, see her singing the entire song “You and I” next time you fly Air Canada. It is played inflight, I am told, though I haven't flown on Canada's flag carrier since the campaign launched.

Celine Dion fans — I'm told there are more than a few — need not spend hundreds on a plane ticket just to see that video. I have it right here, courtesy of Air Canada. (This is a 70 MB MPEG file, so be sure you're somewhere with the right bandwidth). The marketing materials that Air Canada provided to reporters included a CD with, among other things, the video of Ms. Dion singing “You and I”.

Now, I must confess that for a guy who grew up on the Clash and The Who, I find “You and I” strangely catchy.

The video, mind you, is pretty straight-ahead stuff. It was shot in Toronto and in Las Vegas, Air Canada said. There is one remarkable shot (see a still of it, right) in the piece. At three minutes, 14 seconds into the video, you'll see Dion hit the big high note of the piece while standing on the end of a runway just as some giant jet flies right over top of her exactly on cue. Do you know what that probably cost? How many times did they have to bring the jet back and start again because they didn't get the timing right?

No one knows what Ms. Dion is costing Air Canada. Air Canada won't say but experts I spoke to said it's likely in the millions. As one reference point, Chrysler paid Ms. Dion $14-million (US) to use her to market minivans although it must be said that Chrysler was to use Ms. Dion more than Air Canada plans to use her.

Not surprisingly, some of the union rank-and-file at Air Canada was less than pleased that, within weeks of coming out of bankruptcy protection — a period during which thousands of employees lost their job or were laid off or took drastic pay cuts — Air Canada is spending lavishly on a glitzy marketing campaign.

Part of that campaign includes painting planes a new minty blue (is that a colour?) and putting a new logo on the tail (see photo left). See the “B-Roll” section of this blog for more photos of Air Canada's new stuff and some more description.