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When Kitty Lun arrived at Hong Kong Baptist College in the 1970s, she went looking for someone to show her how a young woman might build a life in advertising. She found no one. Hong Kong's advertising industry was still finding its voice, and local role models for a woman with creative ambition simply did not exist. So, she stopped waiting for one. Over the next half century, the girl who could find no example became the example: the copywriter whose line “生命冇Take 2” entered the everyday speech of a generation, the executive who ran agencies across Hong Kong, Taipei and Shanghai, the creative mind who carried work from a young Kowloon Tong classroom all the way to the main stage at Cannes, and who, in her seventh decade, had the nerve to begin again inside one of the world’s largest technology companies. Kitty Lun Kit-ying (倫潔瑩) left us at 71. She began, as she always insisted, right here.

Where it all began

Kitty's story is inseparable from the story of communication education at HKBU. Our Department began in 1968, when Hong Kong Baptist College first offered diploma courses in public relations, and it was into this young and still experimental program that Kitty arrived in the 1970s to study public relations and advertising. The College had not yet become a university. The advertising industry in Hong Kong was still finding its voice, and there were few local role models for a young woman who wanted to build a career in creative work. Kitty did not wait for one. She became one.

Among her lecturers was Leonie Ki, herself a pioneer of Hong Kong advertising, who has since recalled Kitty and her classmate Jimmy Lam as the two most brilliant students she taught in that era. That two of the most influential figures in Hong Kong advertising history sat in the same classroom at Baptist College tells us something about what was happening in those early years, and about the kind of education this School set out to offer from the very start. Kitty later completed her master's degree in advertising at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, building on the foundation first laid here at home.

A career that carried the School's name

Kitty entered the industry as a Chinese copywriter at Leo Burnett Hong Kong and rose steadily to creative director before moving to Taiwan to lead the creative department at Leo Burnett Taipei. She returned to Hong Kong as Executive Creative Director of McCann Erickson in 1991 and, in 1997, took on agency leadership as Managing Director and Chief Creative Officer of Euro RSCG Hong Kong, where she built an interactive division at a time when most of the industry was still asking whether the internet mattered. In 2000 she left agency life to run miclub.com, an Asian women's portal, before moving to Shanghai in 2001 as General Manager and Executive Creative Director of Arnold Worldwide China. From 2006 to 2016 she served as Chairman and CEO of Lowe China, leading the agency to become the most awarded in China in 2014 and 2015.

Then, at an age when many would have been content to look back, Kitty chose to look forward. In 2016 she joined Facebook, now Meta, as Head of Creative Shop for Greater China, later taking on interim responsibility for Southeast Asia and the wider Asia Pacific region. She often told younger colleagues that the decision was not a departure from advertising but a way of staying honest about where audiences had gone. It was a characteristic move: curious, unafraid, and entirely on her own terms.

Truth is Virtue

Our School motto is “Truth is Virtue” (唯真為善), and few alumni have lived it as visibly as Kitty. In the 1990s she championed and created a body of public service advertising unmatched in Hong Kong, including the ICAC anti corruption campaigns and the youth crime prevention message "No Take 2" (生命冇Take 2), a line that entered the everyday language of a generation. The industry named her Queen of Public Service Advertising in Hong Kong for producing more public service work than anyone else. She proved that commercial creativity and social conscience were not rivals, and that the same craft that sells a product can also save a life.

Her later work made the same argument on a global stage. The "Human Traffic Signs" campaign for Buick, created under her leadership at Lowe China, won at the Cannes Lions Festival and more than one hundred other awards worldwide, and was named the world's most awarded campaign in the 2014 to 2015 Gunn Report. It was a road safety message. Even at the height of her commercial success, Kitty was still using advertising to make people's lives safer.

Honored by her alma mater

HKBU recognized Kitty on two landmark occasions. In 2008, when the School of Communication marked its 40th anniversary, she was one of forty alumni across four decades to receive the inaugural Distinguished Alumni Communicator Award, in the Public Relations, Advertising and Communication category. Ten years later, in 2018, the University presented her with its fifth Distinguished Alumni Award, an honor that recognizes not only professional achievement but service to the University and society, and that exists expressly so that current students may learn from the experience of those who came before them. Syracuse honored her in the same spirit, naming her among the fifty most accomplished Newhouse alumni in 2015.

Kitty carried these honors lightly. When she received recognition from her alma maters, her response was not to speak of what she had achieved but of what the recognition obliged her to do: to work harder at guiding the next generation of creative people. That was the sentence she chose, and it was the sentence she lived.

A mentor to generations

Ask anyone in the Hong Kong creative community what they will remember most about Kitty, and the answer is rarely an award. It is the time she gave. Her peers have spoken this week of her ever evolving spirit and of the generosity she poured into leading and nurturing young talents; of her passion for embracing new generations; of her role as a mentor and friend to people who went on to lead the industry themselves. For decades she served as juror and jury president at creative award shows across Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, the United States, Canada, and Eastern Europe, and in every one of those rooms she used her seat to open doors for people who had not yet had their chance. In 2011 she initiated and hosted a main stage forum at Cannes Lions, "Beyond Mad Men: Towards Gender Balance in Creative Roles," long before such conversations were common in the industry, because she knew from experience how few women had been given the room to lead.

She shared what she knew as widely as she could. Her 2013 book Advertising Without Lipstick (不抹口紅的廣告) set out her philosophy and her life in advertising in plain and unvarnished terms, and in 2022 she joined twenty other Hong Kong creative leaders to co-author The Philosophy of Everything (乜都有哲學). Both books were, in their way, extended acts of mentorship: an attempt to hand on to strangers what she had spent a career learning.

For our own students, that generosity was never abstract. Kitty remained closely connected to the School throughout her life, returning to campus to speak, to listen, and to encourage.

A bond with the HKBU community

For our own campus and alumni network, Kitty’s devotion was never abstract. It was a constant presence. Actively supporting her alma mater's initiatives, she served as a dedicated judge for creative competitions organized by the School, bridging our distinguished alumni network directly with young talents.

Her commitment extended far beyond our School walls to enrich the wider HKBU community. Notably, in March 2024, she delivered a powerful keynote on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) at an event co-organised by HKBU School of Business and the Alumni Affairs Office, addressing the impact of female leadership and male alliance in the corporate world. Just two months later, in May 2024, she joined the 50th Anniversary Celebration Party of The Young Agency (TYA), the student-run agency operated by our Public Relations and Advertising major in the Department of Communication Studies. Returning regularly as a guest speaker and mentor, she spent that evening exchanging insights with fellow young alumni and students, offering actionable wisdom with her signature warmth.

This profound impact on her peers is echoed by Mr. B.C. Lo (Class of 1978), Chairman of the Communication Alumni Association, who recalled their student days together:

"Kitty was my classmate. The whole class was stunned and saddened by the news. She was always one of the strongest supporters for our Association. Her passing is a great loss to Hong Kong’s communication industry as well as the creative community. She will be missed."

Mr. Henry Yip, another of Kitty’s classmates and a close friend throughout her life, remembered the person behind the achievements:

"Wherever Kitty went, she brought a ray of sunshine with her. Her positivity and warmth were infectious, and I cannot begin to imagine how many people she touched and changed simply through the way she lived and the way she treated others.

Her contributions, both inside and beyond the advertising industry, inspired and encouraged so many. She has undoubtedly left a lasting mark, not only on advertising, but in the hearts of everyone fortunate enough to have known her.

As her close friends, we are heartbroken by her passing. But knowing Kitty, she would always be the first to lift everyone’s spirits, to make us smile, and to remind us to look for the good in life. I believe she would not want us to remember her in sorrow, but to celebrate her brilliant life and to hold on to the boundless creativity and joy she brought into the world.

Rest in peace, old friend. We will miss you deeply, and your light will continue to shine on everyone you ever warmed."

Whether addressing an alumni forum or sitting in the classroom sharing valuable wisdom, experience, and insights on pursuing a successful career, Kitty treated our students not as an audience but as future colleagues. She had a rare gift for making young people feel that their ideas were worth taking seriously.

Final gift to the School

That gift came just three months ago. This past June, Kitty returned to campus to address one of our graduating classes at commencement. She stood before our students as living proof of everything a communication education from this School could become: a career forged across Hong Kong, Taiwan, Shanghai, and the wider Asia Pacific region; leadership of some of the most respected agencies in the world; and, in her seventh decade, the courage to reinvent herself once again inside one of the world's largest technology companies.

Her address was far more than a ceremonial speech. She reminded our graduates that true creativity stems from authentic human experience, and that true communication demands the courage to say something honest about being human. She spoke, as she always did, without pretense. [Watch Kitty's Full Commencement Address] Those who were present will not forget it, and none of us imagined it would be the last time she would speak to us.

Kitty’s legacy

Kitty's legacy lives in the faculty who point to her career when a student asks what is possible. It lives in the alumni she mentored, who now mentor others. And it lives in every student who ever wondered whether someone from Hong Kong, educated at this School, could stand on the main stage at Cannes, build an agency in Shanghai, or teach a global platform how to think. Kitty answered that question with her life. The answer is yes.

She showed us that curiosity need not fade with seniority, that conscience and excellence are partners, rather than rivals, and that the truest way to honor a gift is to spend it on someone else.

Fifty years ago, a young woman arrived on this campus looking for someone to show her the way and found no one. So, she became that person for everyone who came after. That is a legacy no time can erase. It lives forward, in every graduate who leaves this School a little braver because Kitty walked out of it first. They will not have to search for a role model as she once did. They need only look at her.

We extend our deepest condolences to Kitty’s family, friends, colleagues, and the many people around the world who called her mentor. The School of Communication will remember her with pride, with gratitude, and with love.

Rest well, Kitty. Your truth, and your work, live on in every life you touched.