LAXHKG
The route writes itself.
Services
Campaign, Digital and Social Media Advertising.
Result
A design direction that broke from the global airline template, a flexible system built to scale itself across every route and channel.
My Role
Concept, Art Director, Copywriter
Cathay Pacific wanted a new way to sell Los Angeles on Hong Kong, one that didn’t look like airline advertising. Airline advertising has a flight path it never leaves: sweeping aerials, soft strings, a linen-clad couple finding themselves over a bowl of noodles. Hong Kong deserves better, and so does anyone scrolling past it. The brief asked for something built social-first, something that could start on a phone and scale up. So the work started where travelers already are: talking to each other in shorthand, in screenshots, in three letters that say everything.
The route code became the campaign. LAX HKG: a route, a receipt, a boarding pass. Slip in a third three-letter word and the whole thing flips. LAX HKG WOW. LAX HKG OMG. Then that third slot starts doing the strategic work: LAX HKG BKK. LAX HKG TYO. LAX HKG SIN. Hong Kong stops being the destination and becomes the doorway, the first stamp in a trip that keeps going across Asia. Every combination is a one-line story about why the long-haul is the point.
Built on bold, stylized renderings, the system was engineered to be screenshotted before it’s shared, then to grow without losing the idea: LAX terminals, freeway OOH, transit wraps, arrivals takeovers at HKIA. The grammar holds at every size, and it extends to any Cathay gateway by swapping the first three letters. SFO HKG. JFK HKG. YVR HKG. The acronym kit was built so the route map could keep writing itself.
