US Airways: Plane Dance

The commercial features animated contrails swooping in graceful arcs around a parked US Airways jet, with each contrail representing a different destination. The scene resolves into a 3D map of the world depicting the airline’s network and ends with the tagline, “Where you need to be.”

World Famous creative directors Alan Nay and Tony Fulgam came up with the idea for the spot while editing a regional US Airways commercial. “We fell in love with some of the supplemental footage of the planes and decided to build a spec spot around it,” recalls Nay. “We ended up with a great brand piece that shows a beautiful ballet of planes and highlights all the destinations that company serves.”
Nay and Fulgam were only intending to demonstrate their ability to take a commercial from concept through delivery, but when they posted the piece on their website it was spotted by Louis Moses, executive creative director of Moses Anshell, US Airways’ advertising agency, who brought it to the attention of his client. The airline was so impressed, it decided to make the spot a part of its national advertising campaign.
World Famous produced the spot using only its in-house resources. That included writing the script, creating the animation and editing it. “We took huge pieces of metal and made them dance,” says Fulgam. “The music and editing are very important; they tie it together in an important way and helped us hit the right emotional note.”
“Our intent was to communicate the message about all the places that US Airways flies in a way that has a very fluid feel,” Nay adds.
Nay and Fulgam were pleased with the results because they felt that it showed what their company could do in concept development and demonstrated their design, animation and editorial skills. The fact that the spot is now on the air is icing on the cake. “We had a great time putting the piece together,” Nay asserts,” and we are so overjoyed that it’s going to air, we can hardly keep our pants on.”