Cathay has terabits of data on each member’s travel. So the idea was to create a bespoke piece of animated art for each and every member, crafted by using their personal travel history. Each piece of art would visualise the story of their travels in the past year, birthday to birthday. It would be delivered direct to their inbox. We called it The Artmap.

We teamed up with renowned HK-based digital artist Henry Chu who created the algorithmic programme we needed to extract the right data. We then collaborated with him to create a unique virtual Chinese brushstroke tool that would “paint” each 1,089,365 members journeys onto a world map. We designed a programme that ensure no two strokes would ever be replicated, so every single Artmap was unique. The look and feel was inspired by Cathay’s iconic “Brushwing” logo.

To deliver each Artmap direct to members on their birthdays, a complex data journey and trigger system was created. When ready, each member’s extracted data is visualised using the bespoke brushstroke tool system. Artwork files are generated and stored back in the cloud server. It will then notify our CRM partner (a company called ICLP) that the member’s Artmap is ready for email delivery. ICLP then sends out the individually crafted EDM to our member on their birthday.

A world first in direct communications, the Artmap project launched on 24 December 2016, and started generating its 1,089,365 individually crafted art pieces. To date almost 200,000 Artmaps have been delivered direct to members.

From launch in December 2016 to end April 2017:

87% click-thru rate

(industry average 3%)

Video completion 20%

above industry average

Club positive social mentions up 31%

$7.8 million editorial value equivalent

3924 Artmaps downloaded for printing

Almost 200,000 Artmaps delivered to date

1000s of shares across social platforms