Away's 'Travel Changed Me' film, created by American Haiku in 2025, stars FKA twigs in a 90-second 35mm film shot in Bangkok, Thailand, directed alongside
ARCHIVEAway Turns Personal Transformation Into a Luggage Campaign With Travel Changed Me
Away's "Travel Changed Me" is a 90-second film created by American Haiku and released in the United States in April 2025, following FKA twigs through Bangkok, Thailand as her character undergoes a physically and emotionally transformative encounter with Muay Thai boxing, positioning travel itself — not the luggage — as the product's true value proposition.
The campaign marks a deliberate shift in how Away, the direct-to-consumer luggage and travel-lifestyle brand founded in 2015 by Jen Rubio and Steph Korey, chooses to speak to its audience. Rather than showcasing product features or destination fantasy, "Travel Changed Me" foregrounds the psychological and personal stakes of leaving home. The film was distributed across Away's own social channels and ecommerce platforms, targeting women aged 25 to 40 across the US market, according to Reel360. The choice of Thailand as the primary shooting location — specifically Bangkok and surrounding areas — gives the film an immersive cultural specificity that separates it from the aspirational-but-vague travel advertising that dominates the category.
The campaign sits at the intersection of lifestyle filmmaking and brand communication, drawing on the credibility of its creative collaborators to elevate Away beyond the competitive luggage sector. American Haiku, the creative agency behind the work, framed transformation as the central narrative engine, with Muay Thai — a discipline rooted in discipline, endurance, and personal confrontation — serving as the film's dramatic climax. Clapboard rates the campaign 64 out of 100, reflecting its strong creative ambition and craft credentials against a backdrop of limited measurable commercial differentiation.
Away was founded as a direct-to-consumer brand. Its original proposition — quality luggage at a direct price, sold online before the product even existed — was as much a marketing insight as a business model. By 2025, that positioning required fresh creative energy to remain relevant against both legacy players and a crowded field of challenger brands.
The US travel and tourism sector entered 2025 with sustained consumer momentum. Americans' appetite for international and experiential travel, documented repeatedly by the US Travel Association, provided a receptive cultural context for a campaign built on the transformative power of going somewhere new. "Travel Changed Me" meets that appetite not with destination content but with an internal journey, a distinction that separates it from destination-marketing-style campaigns run by competitors such as Samsonite and Rimowa. Samsonite, the category's dominant global player, held more than 17.1% of global smart-luggage sales in 2025, with full-year net sales of $3.5 billion, according to Reel360. Rimowa, owned by LVMH, has built its brand identity around premium materials and heritage — a different but equally established emotional platform.
Against these well-resourced incumbents, Away's strategic choice with American Haiku was to compete on cultural resonance rather than market scale. Casting FKA twigs — a performer whose public identity is bound up with physical discipline, artistic transformation, and cultural boundary-crossing — aligns the brand's narrative with an audience that values self-authorship. As reported by Creative Boom, the creative premise frames a woman's travel experience as culminating in an emotionally transformative Muay Thai match, using sport as a metaphor for the internal work that genuine travel demands.
"Travel Changed Me" was co-directed by Jordan Hemingway and FKA twigs, with FKA twigs also serving as lead performer in the film. The production was executed by Object & Animal alongside TA Prod Inc., with executive producers Morgan Clement and Dom Thomas overseeing the Object & Animal side of the production, as documented by shots.net and Electric Theatre.
The film was shot on 35mm by director of photography Łukasz Żal, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer whose work on Pawel Pawlikowski's films has established him as one of the most formally precise image-makers working in European art cinema. His involvement in a brand film is significant: 35mm is a format choice that carries inherent creative cost and commitment, producing a grain, latitude, and tactile quality that digital formats cannot replicate. Shooting on location in Bangkok and across Thailand adds a further layer of production ambition, requiring coordination with local production infrastructure and lending the film an environmental authenticity that studio-built sets or digital compositing would undermine.
The creative team at American Haiku was led by Chief Creative Officer Thom Glover, with creative direction shared between Ally Betker, Michael Hess, and Ben Muckensturm, as credited by shots.net and the Association of Photographers. Agency producer Mike Hasinoff and producer Alex Chamberlain managed the production pipeline, while editor Dominic Leung at Marsheen shaped the final cut. The presence of Thongpoon, described by sources including Reel360 as a famed Thai Muay Thai practitioner, in the climactic fight sequence grounds the film's central metaphor in something verifiable and culturally specific rather than decorative. The cumulative craft argument of "Travel Changed Me" is that transformation, to be credible on screen, must be earned through production decisions as much as through narrative ones.
ARCHIVENo verified performance data for "Travel Changed Me" is publicly available at the time of writing. Away has not published engagement figures, conversion uplifts, or media reach metrics in connection with this campaign, and no third-party measurement has been reported by MediaPost, Reel360, or any other trade source reviewed for this analysis.
Structural analysis, however, suggests the campaign was built for earned media amplification rather than paid reach. The combination of FKA twigs' established cultural profile, Jordan Hemingway's reputation in fashion and music video direction, and Łukasz Żal's art-cinema credentials creates a press-worthy creative package that generates trade coverage and social conversation independently of media spend. Distribution through Away's own channels and ecommerce platforms, as reported by Reel360, indicates a content-led model designed to deepen relationships with existing customers and reach adjacent audiences through sharing rather than interruption.
The decision to anchor the film in Thailand — a country with deep resonance for travellers in the US market as both a destination and a cultural reference point — gives the campaign search and social discoverability tied to a specific geography and cultural practice. Muay Thai as a narrative device is visually distinctive and category-unusual, reducing the risk that the film is mistaken for generic lifestyle content. Clapboard's score of 64 out of 100 reflects these structural strengths while noting that the campaign's commercial impact remains unverifiable and its product integration is deliberately restrained, prioritising brand feeling over direct purchase motivation.
"Travel Changed Me" is a 90-second film Away released in the United States in April 2025. Created by American Haiku and co-directed by Jordan Hemingway and FKA twigs, it was shot on 35mm in Bangkok, Thailand, and follows FKA twigs' character through a transformative Muay Thai experience rather than showcasing product features.
"Travel Changed Me" was co-directed by Jordan Hemingway and FKA twigs. FKA twigs also performed the lead role in the film. The production was handled by Object & Animal and TA Prod Inc., with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Łukasz Żal serving as director of photography, as credited by shots.net.
Away and American Haiku chose Bangkok and surrounding locations in Thailand to ground the film's transformation narrative in a culturally specific setting. The climactic Muay Thai sequence features Thongpoon, a noted Thai practitioner, giving the campaign verifiable cultural authenticity rather than generic travel imagery, as reported by Reel360.
American Haiku created "Travel Changed Me" for Away. The agency's creative team was led by Chief Creative Officer Thom Glover, with creative directors Ally Betker, Michael Hess, and Ben Muckensturm, according to credits documented by shots.net and the Association of Photographers for this April 2025 campaign.
Clapboard rates "Travel Changed Me" 64 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong craft credentials — including 35mm production, Oscar-nominated cinematography, and the co-direction of FKA twigs — while noting that verified commercial performance data is not publicly available and product integration is deliberately restrained.
Away's campaign competes on cultural resonance rather than scale. Samsonite, which held more than 17.1% of global smart-luggage sales in 2025 according to Reel360, leads on market presence. Rimowa builds on heritage and materials. Away's "Travel Changed Me" instead foregrounds personal transformation, targeting US women aged 25 to 40 through its own channels.
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