CASE STUDY: Cathay Pacific increases engagement with potential customers

Aim

Two years of international research found that satisfied Cathay customers appreciated the willingness of the airline's staff to treat passengers as individuals. This was seen as a differentiating factor for the brand. The goal of its most recent campaign was to increase engagement with those who fly other airlines and to remind loyal passengers why they fly Cathay.

Execution

Working with McCann Worldgroup, Cathay developed a 'Meet the team' mini site to show the personal side of its cabin crew. Still in operation, it features on and off-duty photos of staff including flight attendants and pilots, along with their thoughts on life, service and why they do what they do. The site was added to the CX mobile application for the iPhone, and was subsequently showcased by Apple to promote the iPhone to developers around the world.

What begun as a small-scale online initiative has since been expanded into a fully integrated campaign that appears in 26 markets worldwide and includes social media, outdoor, print and TV.

Results

The CX mobile application has been downloaded on the iPhone 160,000 times, with a steady 10,000 new downloads per month.

On iTunes, CX mobile jumped into the top 32 applications worldwide shortly after launching, with its highest ranking at number seven. The CX mobile logo was also chosen as the icon for the AppStore's travel section.

Online, there were more than 250,000 unique visitors to the mini-site over the initial launch period. The figure was achieved without any additional promotion.

The 'Meet the team' campaign brought increased profits for Cathay. Over a six-month period from 2009 to 2010, the airline generated incremental growth of more than 25 per cent in online bookings that were directly attributable to the campaign.

This article was originally published as part of the 2010 Top 1000 Brands report.