Just the other day, we were talking about cruise lines differentiating themselves from one another. Branding efforts to make their cruise line your cruise line continue and seem to be the right move at the right time. Carnival Cruise Lines has Guy Fieri, George Lopez and a bunch of branded entertainment and dining venues sure to please. Norwegian Cruise Lines has their deal with Nickelodeon, a version of Cirque, normally land-based Blue Man Group and more. Royal Caribbean too is in the swing of it all with their Dreamworks element, Johnny Rockets and Broadway shows on some ships. Now, Royal Caribbean is putting the spotlight on their English pub experience with this new video.
Guests on a Royal Caribbean cruise can order a pint and settle into one of the cruise line’s onboard pubs for an authentic English pub experience. They will step back in time with the rich, yet comfortable atmosphere, as they sip from more than 35 selections of imported brews.
As the latest cruise line to begin a new branding effort, Crystal Cruises is covering all the bases. Starting this week, a new ad campaign for Crystal positions the brand as a luxurious blend of discovery and adventure, but not just on the sea, where typical cruise line messaging begins and ends. Most of the effort sounds very safe and predictable as one might expect but one little element of the package might very well propel Crystal to never-before-seen popularity.
The plan is for the Begin A New Story positioning campaign to capitalize on Crystal’s luxurious on-board programming as well as the land-based experiences that Crystal cruise line guests are able to discover at its many ports across the world. At first glance, one’s impression might be “So?”; Crystal cruise line is already known as a luxury brand. But don’t dismiss the campaign as boring quite yet.
“The whole idea of sharing the amazing stories of our own Crystal guests to ‘invite’ luxury travelers to experience Crystal completely breaks the mold of traditional cruise communications,” hints Crystal Cruises’ Vice President of Marketing Nitsa Lewis.
Details reveal that the campaign consists of print advertisements, online banners, brochures and literature. Right about now we’re looking for when the Facebook contest will start because that is surely where this is leading.
But then comes the beef.
“A 60 second online animated film brings to life three individuals’ personal experiences in destinations across the globe, reported to be all beautiful examples of the opportunities available on a Crystal Cruise. These films will will also be available via smartphone through the print campaign and emerging Aurasma technology.”
Just sort of slipped in there at the end of a lengthy, othewise monotonous press release, Aurasma technology is huge.
What is Aurasma?
Aurasma is an augmented reality (AR) platform created by Autonomy Corporation for 3G and 4G mobile devices that uses the device’s video camera to recognize pre-trained images and overlay an image or video so that the video tracks as the camera is moved. AR has been a bit slow out of the gate but, like so many new things, look for this to catch on and be a key element in cruise lines marketing.
Photo credit: Marty Desilets via Compfight
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