The Campaign

Cathay Pacific had already made news-worthy strides across its business to reduce waste and improve efficiency over the previous year. We felt this was a perfect opportunity to promote its sustainability stance during one of the most wasteful times of the year – Chinese New Year. The festival’s tradition promotes the disposal of all things old, from clothes to furniture. Millions of Lai See paper packets also end up in the bin – only 2% of packets are recycled after use. We then discovered that Cathay annually disposes of thousands of uniforms once they are retired from service –heading to the landfill. This inspired us to bring the issue of CNY waste and Cathay uniform waste together to create meaningful Lai See that would make a difference in more ways than one. Uniform Lai See is the city’s first sustainable, upcycled Lai See made entirely from retired Cathay Pacific uniforms.

Creative Execution

To create Uniform Lai See, we needed to find a designer who could create beautiful bespoke designs from old material. That’s when we discovered Agnes Tsui, Hong Kong’s very own award-winning eco-designer. His created a contemporary design that implemented key Chinese symbols and elements. This included things such as the “Endless Knot”, a traditional Chinese knotting technique that is believed to bring prosperity and endless happiness. We then approached a local textile charity, St James Settlement, to hand-make and craft each Lai See. All proceeds from the sales would then be passed back to the charity. Finally, we launched our Uniform Lai See at the closing ceremony of the world’s biggest fashion upcycling competition, Redress. Redress brings fashion designers from all around the world together in international locations – competing to make new fashion items out of old clothing. The Lai See was released for sale online and onboard.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

• All Uniform Lai See sold out within 3 days. • It became the most talked about Lai See on social media, during the Chinese New Year period, with four times the number of mentions compared to the nearest branded Lai See – branded Lai See was produced by brands such as Nike, Apple, H&M and most other global companies with Hong Kong presence. • Positive brand sentiment during CNY was higher than at any other point in the previous 8 months. • All proceeds from Uniform Lai See sales went to charity. • The project sparked a heated sustainability debate in the city with major Chinese publications sharing stories including – shocking figures related to the millions of paper packets wasted, how to have a sustainable CNY, and the publicizing the location of local recycling points. • A whole year’s worth of Cathay Uniforms was saved from the landfil