CARNIVAL — Choose Fun
The cruise industry is a funny beast. All cruise lines come out with their largest campaign for the year in a time period they’ve dubbed, Wave Season. The timing coorelates to launching their campaigns in time for the new year, which is historically when the greatest percentage of bookings happen. This was Carnival’s Wave campaign for the year.
For Carnival, research confirmed that we were running against perceptions that Carnival was an over-the-top party environment, was only for families with small kids, and only basic amenities & destinations. Historically, work had centered on jokes and punchlines to convey the fun. But this year we really strived to show a more dimensional , genuine expression of fun. To show a greater balance of exciting and relaxing fun, a greater age range, and some of their great amenities. Things that core memories are based on. Oh, and they wanted to incorporate their celebrity partners like Shaq, Emeril and Guy Fieri.
This was a massive campaign with seemingly endless pieces of content. Here’s a sampling.
Directed by Ben Quinn
Cinematography by Ryley Brown
Product
These spots, both the :30 and :15s, were designed to show off more of the product offering than the previous spots. And we did that by breaking into categories, like off-ship adventures, food, or elevated amenities found on their Excel-class ships.
Edited by Jeff Ferruzzo
Category :06s
We used a slightly different approach to the :06s utilitizing a rapid cut of our photography paired with some of our footage to capture attention.
Cinema
We created bespoke :30s for our cinema media placements that leaned into movie genre tropes. A mystery for the family spot, and a romcom for the adult couples spot.
Social content
We also utilized our film cast to create social first content leaning into some social trends to show off the Carnival experience.
Organic social series
We created a ton of organic social series like Bolt or Bust, First Day/Last Day, Truth or Fun and Bliss or Miss as a way to show off the features of the ship in a fun way.
Created with an army of people. Leah Jarem, Meredith Niles, Dylan Brackett, Max Eberle, Caroline Burke, Will von Weise, Ashley Stinett, Caitlin Slack, Zach Myrow, Mena Hall, Devin O’Neill, Andreina Byrne & many many more.
Campaign imagery
We really wanted to create a sense of the memory making that’s done on a Carnival cruise. So with our photography and films we really tried to catch an intimacy as if the person taking the picture was party of the inner circle. Someone who can capture the subject being their most authentic because there’s a trust and familiarity.
Photography by Emily Scarlett Romain
