Carnival

In 2008, Carnival Cruise Lines was in trouble. Nobody considered cruising to be a real vacation option – only 18% of the U.S. population had ever taken a cruise and cruising came low down on people’s vacation options. People even preferred camping to taking a cruise. With the financial market starting to dive, people were spending less money on vacations. For those that did have money to spend, there were appealing options from Carnival Cruise Lines’ competitors such as Royal Caribbean which was continually investing in product innovations. RCI and Norwegian were offering cheap deals, threatening Carnival’s long-standing reputation as the best value cruise vacation.

Carnival needed to ramp up sales by focusing communication efforts in markets that were within easy reach of the port, where an airfare would not be necessary to get to the cruise.

The main barrier to purchase was the perception that Carnival Cruises were about D-list celebrities, cheesy sing-a-longs, elderly people and drunk 22-young people. Carnival wanted to replace this with the feeling of spontaneous group fun.

This was harnessed through spontaneous interactive events in drive-to-port markets where people could play with the world’s biggest beach ball and piñata (Guinness World Record big). This was filmed and used in commercials – representing the first time a ship wasn’t used in the TV spots. Giant Twister mats were taken to local train stations encouraging people to take a break from their daily routine. Ship entertainment and hospitality was extended to local events. Interactive aquariums were placed in vacant stores featuring cartoon sea life that people could interact with using their mobile phones, directing a particular fish using their phone’s keypad.

Carnival cabin stewards create towel animals every night to make vacationers smile when retiring to their staterooms. To capitalize on this on-board tradition, Carnival introduced a“Towel Animal Theater” series through online video (YouTube, Hulu, etc) and extended it to online/digital OOH video properties including Taxi TV. A massive OOH campaign, high-profile primetime TV, cinema and robust interactive plans continued to share fun.

As a result, Carnival sailed away with the highest number of weekly bookings in company history during March - the height of the 2009 recession! Carnival.com visits increased by 15% compared to 2008, with web leads and online bookings up 95% against estimates. Although sales figures are confidential, total gross bookings grew significantly year-on-year.