James Blackwood: These wings are made for soaring

Campaign: Pacific Blue - Travel Happy
Agency: Lowe Worldwide
Creative team: Senior writer Mike Wilson, senior art director Nick Clements
Reviewer: James Blackwood, executive creative director, Blackwood King Adpartners

As the advertising luminary Bill Bernbach - the B in DDB - said: "If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic."

But getting noticed has always been the prerequisite. Getting noticed for the right reasons is the ultimate prize.

While there are many ways to attract attention, from the slapstick to the soporific, sometimes the hardest but potentially most valuable way to connect with potential customers is to be disarmingly charming.

And that's why I applaud Pacific Blue's Flying Geese 30-second television spot, part of the "Travel Happy" campaign.

The basic scenario: Three geese fly into view. They do what geese do (or I think they do), fly in rigid, predictable formation. A graphic explains: "We all travel some time ... why not have fun doing it?" At which point the third goose elegantly peels off and nonchalantly performs the sort of aerobatics preferred by non-conformist, young-at-hearts.

The main reasons I like it?

* It's nice when an ad appears amid the gloom of the evening news and has the ability to stop conversations, arguments or protestations about doing homework and generally puts everyone in their "happy space". My sons Fynn, 12, and Ethan, 9, love it. So does the cat.

* The infectiously happy soundtrack composed by living legend Murray Grindley. It puts me in a good mood every time I hear it.

* The world-class animation from Glen Robson and the team at Kaleidoscope is a reminder that Kiwis can fly.

* The simplicity of the idea from the agency creatives. They have cared enough about this campaign to ensure it remained undiluted and single-minded. A great deal of passion and faith would have been required to commit to a script that, on the page, would have looked something like "We see three geese fly into frame. One flies upside down. Up comes logo."

* It's campaignable. The challenge will be to make the next one better.

In an age where a journey across the Pacific can be about as glamorous as a bus trip across town, the promise of the holiday actually starting when you get on the plane is an appealing antidote to that "other" airline, which seems to spend a lot more on advertising than it does on catering.

This wasn't the kind of approach I expected from a challenger brand like Pacific Blue. Given its Virgin pedigree and the Branson appetite for irreverence and shock value rather than understatement, this is a low-key, feel good approach.

At its heart, though, it is still single-mindedly true to the Branson philosophy of "when the world zigs - zag". Or in this case when the world zigs, barrel roll.

I'm guessing that Pacific Blue wants to attract family holiday traffic and therefore create mum-friendly advertising. With this ad it has got the whole family's attention. And it has successfully created an expectation that getting there is half the fun.

Now will it get our collective bums on seats? Highly likely, as long as the pilot doesn't fly quite so spiritedly as that goose.