When was the last time you cried watching an ad?
Cathay has turned 80 and to mark the milestone, the airline has rolled out work that reminds you about the tenderness of sacrifice, the comfort of belonging and familial love that lets go so we can grow… Needless to say, it tugs at heartstrings.
'The Journey Home' follows a mother and daughter growing up in Hong Kong's Kai Tak neighbourhood in the 1990s. They go about the humdrum of life, the daughter dreams of what lies ahead, and through the fun and the quarrels, they never stop playing their rooftop guessing game, which airline will pass just above their home.
For the uninitiated, before its closure in 1998, Hong Kong’s Kai Tak airport was considered one of the most demanding airports in the world for pilots to fly in and out of. As it sat in a bowl, surrounded by mountains and water—and later studded with apartment blocks—landing at a low-altitude, 47-degree turn at nearly 200 miles per hour, under two nautical miles short of the runway was a hair-raising event even for experienced pilots. The airport's first recorded flight dates to 1925, and for over seven decades, it was the gateway through which Hong Kong met the world.
The film follows the highs and lows of the daughter who leaves home to pursue her dreams in New York. The mother upends her own comfort to give the child more… they grow apart to grow together and journey home when they find themselves, the green tailfin always there as a reminder of warmth and home.
Campaign Asia
sat down with Edward Bell, general manager of brand, insights and marketing communications
at Cathay, to discuss the campaign, which took over a year to bring to life.
"By the middle of last year, we had coalesced around this idea of a love letter to Hong Kong. We have documentaries to handle the factual then-and-now of Cathay, but we needed something else to capture the feeling of those 80 years. The first insight was understanding that there is something that needs to be said, not just to the people of Hong Kong, but to families everywhere who can relate to the conflict between wanting the best for your children and wanting to keep them close. That tension in the film—wanting the best for you, but knowing that's going to hurt me—came together in the middle of last year," he explains.
That love letter is a 10-minute emotional gut-punch that was screened to an intimate audience in Hong Kong on May 5, followed by a conversation between Bell, acclaimed commercial director David Tsui, who has been directing for 40 years, as well as the cast.
The human story, long-form and why it still matters
“There are ads, and then there is this,” says Bell. For one, unlike a conventional aviation milestone film, the story does not sell destinations, fares or loyalty points and yet manages to be an ode to Cathay's identity since 1946, when its first aircraft, Betsy, took flight. "The brief was to keep Cathay in the background and not make it the star," he explains. "Keep the branding contextual and subliminal, so the story breathes on its own."
Tsui explains the visual treatment of peppering Cathay in the film without overt branding to translate the brief on screen. "The sound of Cathay punctuates different emotional moments in the story: the joy when the daughter is a little girl, the tension between mother and daughter when she wants to study abroad, the sight of the plane in New York after she becomes successful. Cathay is a very important character throughout the film — just not the star."
Creative arm Leo’s 10-minute film is an audacious choice in times when budgets are audited to the last decimal and short reels, six-second bumpers dominate social feeds and the marketing mix.
Bell talks about how it was commissioned to be a 5-minute-long film, but somewhere between the script, the performances and the city itself, that was an impossible ask. “We just found it harder to make it shorter — that's the problem. Once David Tsui was involved, who is also a Hong Konger who grew up near Kai Tak, he also injected his own experience into the story. At that point, we did wonder if it could be edited shorter; it was tempting to trim it down, but we couldn’t do it without missing part of the story. The longer format gave the performances room to breathe and the emotion time to land.”
Bell is an unabashed believer in long-form storytelling as a tool for brand building. For all the industry hand-wringing about shrinking attention spans, he is unconvinced that audiences have lost their appetite for narrative. Competition for attention is fierce, but people still binge-watch entire series in a day, he argues. "The importance of storytelling for brands has not diminished. Stories are still the preeminent way brands can articulate why they should be considered and chosen."
At the moment of purchase, the decision turns on specifics like price, route, timing, he adds, but before that moment, the consumer filters the brands they would consider. That shortlist, Bell argues, is formed entirely through storytelling. "What you're prepared to pay for Cathay versus someone else is a function of the value equation in the consumer's mind, built through stories. That's brand recall and that's how marketing generates value."
For David Tsui that value is rooted in memory. He grew up in Kai Tak's flight path in the 80s, where plane-spotting was part of daily neighbourhood theatre. He and his friends would wager on which carrier would appear next—Cathay, JAL, BA—learning to tell airlines apart by livery and engine sound. Shot over four days, Tsui wanted the film to capture the wonder and magic of a city where planes passed so low overhead they felt like weather rather than transport.
To do that, the production stitched together archival documentary footage, compositing, shadow work and digitally reconstructed environments to show the density and vertigo of old Kai Tak. A handful of scenes also used AI-assisted image building to reconstruct what could no longer be filmed. “It's a good example of a story that is, heart and soul, human-made — but without the technology, some of those shots simply would not have been possible,” Bell adds.
Looking back at The Journey Home, 80 years on
The Journey Home globally launches today and Cathay has mapped out a year-long activations and events to mark its anniversary. Earlier this year, the airline unveiled aircraft livery inspired by its 'lettuce leaf sandwich' branding, which also made an appearance on Hong Kong's trams. A curated merchandise collection draws on different eras of Cathay's history, and throughout 2026, cabin crew will take to the skies in vintage uniform designs by Balmain, Hermès, Nina Ricci, and Hong Kong couturier Eddie Lau.
Nostalgia, of course, is a well-worn, reliable marketing ploy. From Margot Robbie’s Barbie to the more recent Devil Wears Prada 2, brands know that people remember the best and quietly forget the rest. When done well, nostalgia is easy and safe. But for Cathay, a love letter to a city that has colossally changed over 80 years and more so in the last decade, was there a risk of the film tipping from warmth into grief?
"My concern was that the film shouldn't be dominated by sadness," says Bell. "The human emotions, the tension of separation and the sweetness of reunion had to be well balanced. We weren't worried about it becoming a statement on change—the purpose was simply to make a focal point where people can say, 'Yes, that was also me. I can relate to that feeling.'"
Casting was vital to that. The film features well-known Hong Kong actors, but relatability, not celebrity was the draw.
"Even if we'd had the budget, I still think we wouldn't have gone that route," says Bell. "Using celebrities can guarantee viewership, but it could have overpowered the story. The beauty of this is that you don't really know these people… they're known actors, but not so well known that the story becomes about them. It could be anyone. That's the power of it. It's for everybody."
And how does one measure that power? Sentiment is notoriously hard to quantify, and Bell is candid about the ambition and the uncertainty it involved. Views and shares will form the hard metrics; qualitative response will do the rest. "We will measure how many people watch all the way through—it's 10 minutes, so that in itself is ambitious. But what we really want to know is whether people feel it says something important, rather than just sells something. The anniversary gives you a rare window to have an unusual conversation with your audience. We're not a melodramatic brand. But this is a moment to give thanks to the people who helped you get there. Through this, we hope to stir a little introspection: for people to say, 'I really was helped by others to get where I got to.'"
When asked what he hopes people remember 80 years from now, Bell returns, instinctively, to the human.
"We chose to call the campaign '80 Years Together' because that sense of humanness, that family feel, has always been part of Cathay. It's a big organisation with many moving parts but there is a human scale about the way Cathay does what it does. And that’s what sets us apart."
He pauses. "I hope '80 Years Together' becomes a small stake in the ground in that conversation. To say that, in the end, togetherness is about the people. And that's what we choose to remember."
CREDITS
Client: Cathay
General Manager, Brand, Insights and Marketing Communications: Edward Bell
Head of Marketing Communications: Vivian Chan
Marketing Manager, Global: Anthony Wu
Assistant Marketing Manager, Global: Maria Ng
Assistant Marketing Manager, Global: Jessica Siu
Marketing Specialist, Global: Simba Leung
Creative Agency: Leo Hong Kong
CEO, Publicis Groupe Hong Kong: Tom Kao
Chief Creative Officer, Leo Hong Kong: Christopher Lee
