TRAVEL ZODIAC

TitleTRAVEL ZODIAC
BrandCATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS
Product / ServiceCATHAY PACIFIC AIRWAYS
CategoryA07. Travel
EntrantMcCANN HONG KONG, HONG KONG
Idea Creation McCANN HONG KONG, HONG KONG

Credits

Name Company Position
Guilherme Pecego McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Creative Director
Martin Lever McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Executive Creative Director
Dan Jacques McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Associate Creative Director
Brandon Cheung McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Managing Partner
Julia Broughton McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Group Account Director
Adina Surdu McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Account Director
Isobel Jordan McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Account Manager
Evelyn Chan McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Chinese Creative Director
Yvonne Cheng McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Junior Copywriter
TingNgo Mok McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Digital Art Director
Jay Lee McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong English Copywriter
Doris Law McCann Worldgroup Hong Kong Assistant Digital Producer
Kwoksum Pun MRM McCann Hong Kong Senior Programmer
Remi Gasek MRM McCann Hong Kong Director of Development and Technology

The Campaign

Travel Zodiac is a data collection campaign aimed at acquiring as much data as possible to better understand and target Cathay Pacific’s customer base with future travel offers. Travel Zodiac achieved this by offering users something special in return, their travel fortune. This campaign played on the fact that Hong Kong is one of the most superstitious cities in the world, where the Chinese zodiac is often used to dictate all aspects of people’s lives and behaviours. Travel Zodiac asked users to exchange travel preferences in return for their travel fortune and a promo code to fulfill that fortune. The enormous traffic generated from this idea crashed the servers, gave Cathay more data than it had ever had on its regular travellers, and led to one of Cathay Pacific's biggest sales spikes in years.

Creative Execution

We timed our campaign to launch at the time of year when people most consult their Zodiac fortune: Chinese New Year. First, we sent our offer of a travel fortune reading in the form of an EDM. We used an art style inspired by Chinese New Year and traditional Zodiac art. Users were redirected to an interactive mobile site where they were asked to select Zodiac Animal and input multiple travel preferences such as, favourite destinations, preferred way of travelling and frequency of travel. Our fortune algorithm, based on several Zodiac Experts opinions, generated a unique fortune reading based on their animal and preferences selections. A promo code was then generated for them to complete their fortune by instantly booking on the Cathay Pacific booking site. The data collected shaped Cathay Pacific’s entire targeted marketing strategy for the year, allowing them to individually target each customer in their data base.

Results

67% of engaged users shared their data – 40% more than the current global willingness rate to share data with brands. Over 100,000 users voluntarily input their destination preferences A spike of 39% in instant booking when the campaign launched 21% sales increase compared to previous year 76% return on investment A click-thru rate 4% higher than the industry average A continued increase click-thru percentage once users were retargeted based on their preferences.

Travel Zodiac shows how direct marketing is still one of the strongest ways to communicate with potential customers, when executed using engaging, relevant and interactive elements. This campaign was completely measured in behaviour and response.

The problem with a Data-collection-led campaign at the time of the brief, was that Data collection was suddenly seen as an invasive approach to marketing and had been the central topic of the mainstream media daily. Even Mark Zuckerberg wasn't safe! We needed to make giving up your data, enjoyable useful and fundamentally worthwhile. Our target audience was a loose database of names and emails that were gathered in Hong Kong from several previous marketing campaigns and promotions. Knowing we were talking to predominately Hong Kongers gave us our creative insight: In Hong Kong the Chinese Zodiac is seen as one of the most important guides on how to live your life: from choosing what year to have babies, to choosing when to buy an apartment or change jobs. This gave then led us to our creative idea, what if your Chinese Zodiac animal could also guide your travel…

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