FWIW - CX co-branded card sucks per se, given that many cards in Hong Kong can earn more miles than the cobrand.

So whoever issues the cards not really important unless the game has changed.

I do want to see who is the unlucky bank though.

They will need to throw on some extra perks to make the card worthwhile. I highly doubt that anyone can beat SCB's rate ($4=1mile for certain categories, $6=1mile for everything else) without it being economically unfeasible.

Given there’s at least two cards offering 1.5% generally, and given vaccine hesitancy https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33314649-post20.html , the new card has to be offering the equivalent of 2% in miles (or $3/am) for me (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33137201-post5.html and https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33137201-post18.html) for me to use generally.

I’m getting 4.4-5.5% on various BoC mobile pay ongoing earn rates and promotions (getting to the extent I get aggressive with restaurants to take mobile pay if they have them*), 4% on online, 4% playing spending offers from bank to bank, 2.28% on non-mobile dining. My HSBC 6x is on overseas so I earn 5.6% there.

Maybe the card has some worthwhile perks or some killer welcome offer.

*case in point - when it was time to pay up tonight at En TST I asked the junior waitress whether they have “Paywave”, making the tapping motion with my iPhone Apple Pay. The answer was no. As my wife was reaching for her SCB Simply Cash and the waitress walked away, I heard the card terminal go off (the dot-matrix variety) and I decided to check out terminal out - I barely held myself from a meltdown when I saw the terminal had mobile reader. I am not sure the waitress saw me for sure or not but as she was walking my way I made a big show of throwing my wife’s produced SCB Simply Cash into my wife’s lap and telling her to tell the waitress to meet me at her cashier station. When she understood what I was insisting on she fetched her manager who ran the mobile pay transaction - the manager explaining they did not realise the mobile reader can be used to read from Apple Pay as well.

most probably ability to earn status/club points by spending to a threshold. thats what QF doing in Aus, assuming they paid for same useless consultants

So the MPC {O) don’t get it.

Apparently overseas members got the same mail initially

That's what I'm wondering and afraid of. Well, the Taishin co-brand card in Taiwan is still around, but could there be something else for overseas member that will be announced in a few weeks?

Also that's why my first thought was this was not about credit card, as credit card is a localized product.

So it turns out it's much more than just a credit card - they want to become something of an Amazon or AirAsia.

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/...cept-customers

Ouch, that's bad news.

I certainly hope, CX does not go the same road of disputable big-data-privacy/business/tax practices as Amazon did and is doing. There are genuine reasons why Amazon is under the magnifier glass, both in the EU and the US. And, the same for that big one in China.

And, without going the Amazon road, this business type is not really that profitable.......


Edit: And, I immediately removed all marketing newsletter subscriptions, as well as all personal information (for CX, MPC and AsiaMiles) not absolutely needed to be able to fly ;)

Looks like they have dropped “pacific” from their username on Instagram
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f632dde4a.jpeg

FlyPointyEnd - It looks like the Instagram handle has been changed back to "@cathaypacific"... perhaps they've scrapped the rebranding plan already?

Standard Chartered has loaded a new (currently blank) page to their website that seems to be for a new "Cathay" brand credit card.

https://www.sc.com/hk/credit-cards/cathay/

If you replace the "cathay" in the link for another card product name ("asiamiles" or "simplycash"), the link is valid. If you replace "cathay" with a random string of text (or "cathaypacific"), it brings up an error page.

Page source code says it was published June 30th:

Wow, impressive. That's a nice find. This is quite a win for SCB, as they try to reclaim their #2 spot in terms of retail banks in HK.

Personally it would be good news. They offer better service than most banks and certainly better than any Chinese SOE bank.

For English speakers? We just spent Friday trashing SCB as locals.

From AMEX to SCB? Don’t see how “elevating” it is, unless the increase in earn rate is substantial.

Here it is:
https://news.cathaypacific.com/life-...e-brand-1updt6

As for the credit card:
Elevate your daily spending with the new range of Cathay co-branded credit cards, coming in July 2021. With every dollar you spend, you’ll earn Asia Miles to use for your next flight – and to unlock exclusive travel and lifestyle privileges. And for the first time, you’ll earn Marco Polo Club club points without flying.

As you can see, CX plans to integrate its Asia Miles program and Macro Polo program into one new program, and this program will be launched in 1H2022.

Premium Travel Lifestyle Brand
 

Quoted from a friend

Wow. Well, this seems like a lot of marketing nonsense to me, which no doubt it is. I hope there are some more concrete underpinnings, otherwise it's just fluff as far as I am concerned.

I also noticed the totally new design elements used. Fonts, illustrations, even the way the video is edited, all new. They must be working with a new marketing firm for this. It seems out of touch with their existing brand image, although I suppose there is nothing wrong with that. Do they do any of this in-house? I guess not.

Personally it all seems too abstract and wishful for me. Very vague.

The video is terrible! As with most of their recent brand activities, there’s nothing to create an emotional connection with their customer.

Anyone know which marketing firms Cathay [Pacific] works with?

Great experience. They have just kicked me off a the second leg of a return flight that I booked and had the miles deducted in February. Clearly cash sales beat redemptions. What a fabulous way to launch this nonsense.

Move Beyond was done by Publicis.

To Australia, I assume?

Now the email is saying program integration...What the hell?

Received this email today, seems CX will be bringing Marco Polo Club and Asia Miles together.

Dear Mr XXX,Today marks an important milestone in our story – it's the day we launch a new era of Cathay Pacific, the brand under which we bring together our airline as well as travel and lifestyle-related offerings in markets beyond Hong Kong.
We do this with two goals in mind:
The first is to make ourselves easier to understand and use. By bringing together Marco Polo Club and Asia Miles under Cathay Pacific, we are simplifying the way you interact with us, including how you earn status and use your miles.

The second is to make our proposition more appealing. By integrating our offerings and building better partnerships, we aim to bring you a much wider range of products and services that elevate and complement your travel lifestyle.

Over the coming months, we will be rolling out a range of new offers – and these will culminate in a refreshed programme in the first half of 2022.

The new Cathay Pacific will be a celebration of all the things we love (and have missed) about travel – and a brand that is unapologetic in its love of everything travel related.

If there is one thing this pandemic has reminded us, it's that travel really does elevate our lives.

Looks like it’s a new umbrella brand covering non-flying / lifestyle businesses which CX is trying to launch - to reduce its reliance on flying. “Cathay Pacific” will still be kept as the name of the airline and the brand of the airline, but “Cathay” looks like an umbrella brand covering all businesses - current and yet to be created new businesses, and only be used in markets with lifestyle businesses rolled out. So in short, Cathay Pacific will be one of the brands under Cathay in the Cathay ecosystem.

—
From Marketing Interactive:

/// Earlier this month, Cathay Pacific announced its new business model. Under the new plan, Cathay Pacific will become just one of the brands within the Cathay ecosystem.

It's reported that the senior management of the company has likened the plan to that of AirAsia, which offers a wide variety of businesses including food delivery, online groceries as well as health and insurance segments. Previously, the company rolled out an ad that shows multiple lifestyle items via email to its customers. In that email, the company said that it is "always searching for new ways to help you move forward in style – to connect you with people, places and experiences that matter." ///

If they can't explain the umbrella branding clearly and simply to customers with tangible benefits, they have little to no hope of executing it successfully.

The more "worrisome" aspect of this is the signalling of changes to the Marco Polo Club:

Get ready for "enhancements".

Another wow-this-is-so-meaningful-email received today.... can't they just write succinctly what has happened?

----------------------------

5 July 2021
Membership No.: XXX XXXX XXX

Dear Mr XXXX,


Today marks an important milestone in our story – it's the day we launch Cathay, our new premium travel lifestyle brand for Hong Kong.

Whilst our airline will continue as Cathay Pacific, "Cathay" will be the brand under which we bring together all our travel and lifestyle-related offerings.

We do this with two goals in mind:

The first is to make ourselves easier to understand and use. By bringing together Cathay Pacific, Marco Polo Club, and Asia Miles under Cathay, we are simplifying the way you interact with us, including how you earn status and use your miles.

The second is to make our proposition more appealing. By integrating our offerings and building better partnerships, we aim to bring you a much wider range of products and services that elevate and complement your travel lifestyle.

Over the coming months, we will be rolling out a range of new offers in spending, dining, shopping, hotels, and wellness – and these will culminate in a refreshed programme in the first half of 2022.

Cathay will be a celebration of all the things we love (and have missed) about travel – and a brand that is unapologetic in its love of everything travel related.

If there is one thing this pandemic has reminded us, it's that travel really does elevate our lives.

<Learn More> (link to another website)

We can't wait to share more details with you.

Yours sincerely,
Marco Polo Club

Honestly Lipstick On A Pig comes to mind.

Well, I gotta admit, I like the copy. It's vague, ambiguous, and leaves me perplexed about what the hell they are doing, but I like the copy. The voice is uplifting and inspirational. The tone is optimistic. There are no grammatical mistakes, and even the use of "whilst" harkens back to the days of British rule. Lol. I guess.

Snap back to reality, I don't know the hell this is going to work out well. Why are they trying to hard to copy AirAsia? To me, it seems like management should double-down on their core business to get that righted first rather than adding a portfolio of wide-reaching businesses in which they have absolutely no experience. A new credit card? Yeah, cool, great. That's fine. I'll sign up when I can. But shopping, dining, hotels, and wellness? Come on.

Yeah, I'm pretty pessimistic about this, something of which we still know very little about. It just seems like writing on the wall to me though, at least for these new businesses.

-Chris

It's actually nothing different to what they are currently doing:

Shopping: Refers to Asia Miles redemptions
Dining: Asia Miles earning in restaurants
Hotels: They already act as a travel agent for hotels
Wellness:......who knows.

So as percysmith suggested....lots of lipstick.

Looks to me like they're trying to widen AsiaMiles into an online shopping site, looking to raise cash for what we used to spend miles on when we couldn't get/ didn't want flight redemptions. And if it is a case of earning miles from spending, then based on the blurb (and link in the message), it doesn't really look like you'll get miles from everyday spending to the extent that is (or was?) possible with BA / Avios

I sincerely hope they won’t link the card’s tier to your account’s tier.
I mean do they expect people randomly dropping 8M HKD opening new private client level accounts just for the damn card?

Broadly, Standard Chartered's Priority Private is equivalent to HSBC Jade. Both a half-way house between purist private banking and Premier/Priority, and both need USD 1m ish in total relationship balance.

I have moved discussion about the new credit card to a separate thread.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...iscussion.html

We can continue discuss other aspects of the “Cathay” brand in this thread.

sxc
Cathay Pacific Moderator

hey, the cx website now just shows "cathay" without the pacific...

So we're finally here - July 2022, when "...a new era of Cathay Pacific takes flight. We’re bringing together the best of Marco Polo Club and Asia Miles under a single membership."

Expecting an announcement any day now, barring some kind of delay... anyone have any guesses or inside info to share? :)

Still yet to hear any major leaks about the new programme structure. I'd have thought some details would have crept out by now.

Virgin Australia’s just turned out to be a logo refresh. What should we expect from CX? Probably less