Brand Anew: Cathay Pacific’s Stroke of Genius
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APEX Insight: Every airline logo tells a story. Deciphering its narrative is key to relaunching the brand. In this section of the multipart feature, we look at how Cathay Pacific lent its brushwing logo to Dragonair to deepen the airlines’ familial ties.
Landor Associates’ 1994 Cathay Pacific logo design was a stroke of genius: The calligraphy-style brushwing has been at the forefront of the airline’s branding initiatives ever since.
Hong Kong-based brand consultancy Eight opted for subtle adjustments to the design when tasked with giving the brand a major facelift 20 years later: jettisoning the red line and the bulky square, minimizing the feathering effect and elongating the tail of the logo. “Essentially, we simplified the logo, and we set the brushwing free,” says Iain Richardson, creative director at Eight. The design has since appeared on luggage tags, digital interfaces and airline employee pins, creating brand cohesion across multiple customer touchpoints.
When it came time to clarify to customers what the partnership between Cathay Pacific and its wholly owned subsidiary of 10 years entailed, Dragonair was rebranded into Cathay Dragon, with the brushwing logo calligraphed onto its livery. Cathay Dragon retains its characteristic Dragonair red – appearing in the same places that its parent’s teal does – but relieves itself of the dragon design on the tail.
“When our customers travel between Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon, we want them to have a seamless experience, and our new branding reflects this.” €” Robecta Ma Cathay Pacific
Instead of occupying different niches on the service spectrum, as is the case for most sister airlines, Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon differ on their designated routes, coalescing into a combined network. The former focuses on overseas destinations, while the latter’s purview is over mainland China. “When our customers travel between Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon,” explains Robecta Ma, vice-president, Marketing, Americas, Cathay Pacific, “we want them to have a seamless experience, and our new branding reflects this.”
Early this year, the airlines teamed up with McCann Worldgroup to send birthday wishes to their more than one million Marco Polo Club loyalty members in the form of “painted journeys.” The Artmap Project uses an algorithm to create personalized works of Chinese art that cleverly resemble the airlines’ logo.
According to Elaine Lee, Cathay Pacific’s manager for Loyalty Marketing, “Each Artmap is hosted on a minisite, where members witness their piece painting itself before their eyes, elegantly illustrating their year of travel.” Like the visual depictions of each individual’s travels with the sister airlines, the evolution of the brushwing logo traces the parallel journey of the making of an iconic brand.
“Brand Anew” was originally published in the 7.2 April/May issue of APEX Experience magazine.