Eight Partnership Hong Kong helps Cathay Pacific rebrand Dragonair to Cathay Dragon

Cathay Pacific and Dragonair have unveiled its work on Cathay Dragon, a new marquee brand born from the rebranding of Dragonair, the award-winning regional airline within the Cathay Pacific Group.

Eight worked with the brand and senior management teams at Cathay Pacific and Dragonair on their brand portfolio strategy and created the resulting new logo, identity and livery for Cathay Dragon.

“This is exciting news for Cathay Pacific which is celebrating its 70 years of history as a Hong Kong home-based international carrier. Dragonair has an important role for the Cathay Pacific business, bringing travellers in and out of Mainland China via its Hong Kong hub. To create a new brand with closer synergies to Cathay Pacific’s will deliver clear benefits to both airlines,” said Chris Fjelddahl, Partner at Eight Partnership. “We are proud to have played a part in engineering such a significant new brand.”

Eight’s role in developing the new Cathay Dragon brand is a continuation of an ongoing brand refresh and realignment process started with the Cathay Pacific brand in 2014. Beginning with the articulation of a brand design ethos for Cathay Dragon that is aligned with Cathay Pacific’s overall brand architecture, the strategy sets the tone, context and roadmap for the development of the new brand and will be used to achieve an effective roll-out in the marketplace.

Cathay Dragon’s new visual identity shares Cathay Pacific’s iconic brush wing logo but is used with the red colour that is a hallmark of Dragonair today. A refined dragon illustration, also worked on by Eight, will appear on the aircraft fuselage as a motif on the fleet’s livery. This is a subtle point of difference from the Cathay Pacific brand. “They are members of the same family, with the same DNA but have slightly different personas and character,” added Fjelddahl.

Cathay Dragon operates a fleet of 42 aircraft and flies to 53 destinations in the Asia-Pacific region, including 23 core destinations in China. The new brand signifies a new era for the future of the Cathay Pacific Group as they prepare themselves for the continuing growth in travel throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Outbound tourism from Mainland China alone has tripled in volume from 31 million to 109 million in the last decade.