Situation

Luxury travel is growing 33% faster than any other travel category. Yet cruise line advertising is literally a sea of sameness. Massive white monster ships. Guests are wearing dinner suits, evening dresses and jewels. Captains’ parties. All these clichés are supposedly shouting luxury, when in fact they are just shouting.

Brief

Crystal, a 6-star cruise line, asked us to relaunch the brand. They wanted to disrupt the market. To them luxury is not 5 star this or 5 star that. Their high crew to passenger ratio means that to them, and their guests, luxury is something very different. It’s personal.

They believe luxury should be whatever you want it to be – whether that’s truffles sauce, béarnaise sauce or tomato sauce. It’s also personal time and space for our high-end audience; something there is plenty of on a Crystal voyage.

Objective

To drive increased website traffic and bookings.

Instead of shouting about luxury, we showed our audience how luxury feels when you travel with Crystal. We created a series of press ads that captured personal moments of the guests. Micro stories of reconnection – the result of time and space.

Data gathering

We conducted 23 industry studies, researched 75 cruise and luxury blogs and listened to 115,000 social conversations.

Target audience

Our audience is typically older and affluent, and despite only 11% taking a vacation in the last 12 months, 32% of those chose luxury travel. We had four key segments, all quite different, but what united them was they preferred to make memories over acquiring things. They are looking for a brand that understands what luxury truly means to them, beyond gimmicks or surface features. They are looking for time and space, discovery and choice.

Approach

We knew that stories sparked journeys. So we created a series of micro stories that brought to life how Crystal gives them time, space, choice and discovery in an utterly beautiful way.

Call to action

Visit crystalcruises.com or contact your travel advisor

The campaign launched in January 2019 across the luxury and travel sector, including Conde Nast Traveler magazine, Departures and Town & Country, shortly followed by recurring print runs in National Geographic Traveler, New York Times Magazine as well as key titles relevant to our specific audiences such as Food & Wine and Conde Nast’s Bon Appetit, targeting those we knew were foodies. On viewing our first ad, Conde Nast Traveler immediately informed Crystal that it would be moved to the inner front cover due to it incorporating the message of their brand so effectively. Our press ads are currently confirmed to run continuously in these publications into Q4 2020, reaching the combined circulation numbers of just under 16 million readers.

Business impact – 1150% increase in bookings

Response rate – 11.2% increase in new monthly website visits, 35% increase in request-a-quote lead activity.