For a while, the cruise industry was on shaky ground water. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
More than 31 million people are projected to go on cruises this year, an uptick from 2019 numbers, according to the Cruise Lines International Association’s State of the Cruise Industry 2023 report. Last quarter, Royal Caribbean Group said the “seven biggest booking weeks” in its history had occurred since November.
Morning Brew sat down with Royal Caribbean International CMO Kara Wallace to hear about how the company is marketing its cruises now that the industry is bouncing back.
Could you give a high-level overview of your marketing strategy and how it’s changed during the pandemic?
We went from what was a full-funnel marketing plan to one that was primarily focused on one-to-one communication and a reliance, heavily, on our database and social media…During that time period, we engaged with our customers through things like virtual cruising. How can we entertain them? How can we bring the joy of cruising to them while they were still in their homes? We had a virtual cruise director who, for seven days a week, hosted multiple events, trivia concepts, musical acts, you name it, so that as people were in their home, we were still engaging with them as a brand. And we also did things to not only engage our customers but also other stakeholders like travel agents, where we posted lots of coffee talks each week, giving them updates on the business…Our primary job during that time was keeping a pulse on the customer [and] how they were feeling, not only about vacations [and] cruising, but also how they were feeling emotionally. And that was really important, because it gave us the confidence to know what we needed to do and how we needed to communicate.
Your marketing strategy has evolved to target younger millennial families. Could you talk a little bit about that?
It’s been our marketing strategy really since 2015 with the launch of our “Come Seek” campaign, which was an invitation to the next generation of cruisers, focused on millennial families…“Come Seek” has really been our overarching marketing campaign. It gave us a tone of voice, an energy, a vibe that really has successfully connected with this target of millennial families new to cruises, and one that we’ve continued to be able to build upon…Recently, we launched Icon of the Seas, the ship that’s going to be the ultimate family vacation…and two weeks ago, we introduced it into Fortnite. That was a way to bring our brands to a place where families are playing [and] exploring. And it’s advertising in its form, but it’s a way that’s really authentic and organic, and an opportunity to have a more immersive exploration of our ship in perhaps a nontraditional format.
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In terms of your marketing strategy, where are you putting your ad dollars? What channels are you marketing through? Which social media platforms do you tend to focus on the most?
Our plans are really digital- and social-first…We do a lot of work with influencers so that we can show our experience through their eyes and to their audiences in a way that feels really natural and organic, and that’s been really successful.
We’re on all platforms. Over the past few years, of course, we’ve spent more time growing our audience on TikTok. So much so that last year, for Wonder of the Seas, the ship that we launched last year, we did a contest to find the godmother for the ship on that platform, where people were nominating moms. And we did it over Mother’s Day…In addition to social media, we do want to find audiences where they’re spending time, so another portion of our spend and our marketing plan that has been pretty significant is the focus on live sports. That’s just because families are watching it together. It coincides with great timing in terms of fall and winter. We’ve been pretty present with the NFL and live sports; they just have tremendous reach.
There’s talk of a potential national TikTok ban. Is that something that the cruise line is looking at and if yes, would that impact your marketing strategy?
I think what we’ve seen across all social media platforms is they adapt really fast. You’ll see the things that are working on one platform bleed into another platform. Of course, we’re watching that closely. We’ll adapt and adjust our strategies as needed.