Back to Kai Tak
Cathay resurrected Hong Kong's legendary Kai Tak Landing to turn nostalgia into a citywide wave of brand love.
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AI Translation Summary
To mark the opening of Kai Tak Stadium — built on the site of Hong Kong's old airport — Cathay, as title sponsor of Rugby Sevens, seized a chance to reignite brand love at a moment when the airline faced fading pride at home. It re-enacted the iconic low-altitude Kai Tak Landing as a live, one-off spectacle, turning a shared piece of collective memory into a citywide celebration of Cathay and of Hong Kong itself.
Cultural Context
For decades before its 1998 closure, planes descending into old Kai Tak Airport banked so low over Kowloon's rooftops that passengers could see into apartment windows — an experience etched into Hong Kong's collective memory and long celebrated as one of the world's most thrilling landings. Cathay, born at that airport, drew on this shared nostalgia to reconnect with a public whose pride in, and trust toward, the airline had recently declined.
Entry Information
Summary
When Rugby Sevens, Hong Kong’s Superbowl-equivalent event with Cathay as the title sponsor, was set to launch its brand new Kai Tak Stadium, we had an opportunity to ignite brand love. Especially since Cathay faced negative sentiment in the home market. The new stadium was built on the original Kai Tak Airport, the birthplace of Cathay, Hong Kong’s flagship carrier. We celebrated this moment by doing the impossible: creating our own outdoor media by re-enacting the Kai Tak Landing route to re-create a beloved cultural memory and remind locals of our collective pride and love for the city and brand.
Strategy
Our primary audience was existing Cathay customers, who were already familiar with the brand and were likely to recall Cathay's frequent Kai Tak Landings. Over the past few years, Cathay has faced negative sentiment in the home market. The belief that Cathay represented the worst of Hong Kong, including a decline in quality, service, and global fame. Additionally, due to a lack of mass communication from Cathay, there was a significant decline in brand love. As the SCMP states, “A University of Hong Kong survey has found that Hong Kongers’ sense of pride has plunged to an all-time low.” To evoke pride, brand love and awareness, we knew we couldn’t rely on traditional advertising. We needed to do something that really moved our audience, and the whole city, emotionally.
Execution
We worked with 20+ organisations, including the Hong Kong government, to ensure we could safely re-enact the low-altitude flypast. We retrained pilots, just to fly at touching distance. We orchestrated: A week in advance, the government issued an official announcement through social media. Media titles reshared the spectacle's time and date. We found 20 vantage spots on skyscrapers and placed our videographers to capture new iconic photos and videos of this fly past. We worked with one of Hong Kong’s largest news broadcasters, RTHK, to broadcast the event LIVE. Inside the Kai Tak Stadium, we broadcast the whole low-altitude flight route as the pilots narrated this experience LIVE to immerse the 30,000 people audience. Within 24 hours, we published official photographs and social videos.
Results
By doing the impossible, the pride of Hong Kong flew again: #1 trending topic in Hong Kong HKD13 million in Global PR value 97.3% positive sentiment for Cathay (a historic high) 6.8 million in total reach 9.4 million video views (in a city of 7 million people) Most importantly, Hong Kong was reminded of why they love Cathay. Over thousands of organic posts were shared by people of Hong Kong talking about how this spectacle reminded them of their favourite memories of watching the Kai Tak Landing, reaching over 215,000 engagements. Cathay also had reversed a key trend; for the first time in 6 years the brand saw more positive sentiment than negative sentiment, something that has remained since the activation.