Cathay Pacific
Over a 16+ year period, I led a lot of marketing efforts for Cathay Pacific Airways starting at MRM/McCann and then later at Cooper, Levy & Partners. The following represent some of my favorites:
— LAX to HKG to WOW. —
The route writes itself.
Airline advertising has a flight path it really doesn’t deviate from. Sweeping aerials. Soft strings. A linen-clad couple discovering themselves over a bowl of noodles. Hong Kong deserves better than that, and so does anyone scrolling past it.
When Cathay Pacific was a Cooper, Levy & Partners client, I pitched them a different idea: stop trying to capture a city in a paragraph, and start talking the way travelers already talk to each other. In shorthand. In screenshots. In three letters that say everything.
Airport codes are built to be ignored. LAX → HKG is a transactional message. A route, a receipt, a boarding pass.
But slip a third three-letter word into the sequence, one that has nothing to do with aviation, and the whole thing flips. LAX HKG WOW. LAX HKG OMG. LAX HKG DIM. The route stops being logistics and starts being a reason. Every combination is a one-line story about why the long-haul is the point.
The system was designed to scale across LAX terminals, freeway OOH, arrivals takeovers at HKIA, transit wraps, and a social cut engineered to be screenshotted before it’s shared, and to extend to any Cathay gateway by swapping the first three letters. SFO HKG. JFK HKG. YVR HKG. The grammar holds. The acronym kit was built so the route map could keep writing itself.
— Cathay Pacific Hong Kong eBook —
When I was at MRM/McCann, Cathay Pacific Airways came to us wanting banner ads to sell business-class seats.
We argued that banner ads alone do not move people who are about to spend real money on a premium ticket. Those travelers commit when both the flight and the destination feel worth it, so we built the destination first by creating an immersive eBook that took readers through the sights, sounds, history, and daily life of Hong Kong.
We distributed it through the Apple and Android app stores. It passed 100,000 downloads and drove a clear spike in business-class bookings that generated almost $3mm in revenue for the company. The following is the case study video for the effort:
— Cathay Pacific Airways —
Unexpectedly familiar
Winner of 8+ awards for digital and print, with a campaign that bridged two cultures and made a trip across the world feel familiar.
When I was leading the creative for the San Francisco office of MRM/McCann, Cathay Pacific approached us with a fun project: they wanted help launching their new route from Boston to Hong Kong and needed an authentic way to give travelers a reason to explore a destination halfway around the world.
We created a campaign built on adventure and curiosity about traveling to Asia, and a sense of familiarity between the two cultures that makes the trip feel less intimidating.
Unexpectedly Familiar case study film: A short look at how we bridged Boston and Hong Kong, pairing everyday objects from each culture into single, iconic compositions that made a trip halfway around the world feel within reach.
Winner of over 8 awards for digital and print media including Graphis Gold, Webby Silver and IAC Gold, the effort was one of Cathay Pacific Airways’ most successful route launches ever.
Introducing five flights a day in a new way.
When Cathay Pacific wanted to introduce 5 daily flights from the New York area, we came up with a simple visual device to stand out in the crowded New York media market that ran in print, online and out-of-home.