As the $450 million Grand Princess cruise ship sailed into New York harbor last September, getting media coverage of "yet another ship launch" was the goal for Porter Novelli PR. To meet its objective, the firm didn't lose steam by oversaturating the media; rather, it injected new life into the campaign through carefully planned media hits spanning a six-month period.
By the time the ship docked, the New York-based firm and agency of record for Princess Cruises, Inc. [ADR] had already warmed the media waters with strategic highlights spanning her inaugural week.
High Waters
Despite the news hook that the Grand Princess is the largest ship currently cruising the high seas, the problem remained - how to generate repeated coverage of the same topic without losing public interest. This was Porter Novelli's third ship launch for Princess Cruises and its strategy was to focus on the ship's unique features as the catalyst for media coverage.
The firm sent out four teaser media mailings promoting the ship's amenities and distributed nearly 1,000 press kits locally and nationally from July 1997 through October 1998. From the first press reception through the ship's Europe, New York and Florida activities, personal invitations to travel industry journalists and occasional reminders went out as events neared. One of those media mailings was a bookmark with a message.
"The Grand Princess has the most balconies - 710 - so we custom made bookmarks featuring Romeo and Juliet because most associate balconies with that balcony scene," says Leslie Cohen, VP and account executive on this campaign. This planted a mental image of the ship's glamour and romance.
To pump the story and keep the media primed for more, Princess invited 20 celebrity record-breakers to sail on the ship as guests, exclusively for the inaugural week. Each celebrity represented a specific ship feature: Olympic medalist Mark Spitz highlighted the swimming pools; exercise guru Jack LaLane, the fitness center; and astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the Skywalker's Disco.
Each celebrity conveyed key messages about the ship during live remotes and taped interviews used in B-roll footage. "We didn't want to take a cookie cutter approach with this launch," says Cohen. This was to be the cornerstone event for Princess Cruises.
The Crew
Staffing for organized press tours and last-minute inquiries proved to be the biggest challenge in the campaign's voyage. "No one fully anticipated the reception the Grand Princess received," says Cohen.
The firm found itself scrambling to keep enough PR staff on hand to manage the media barrage and public interest, putting office personnel on shifts to help with the escorted media tours, checking visitors in and distributing the press passes while others manned the office phones.
Cohen recalls having walk-ins who wanted to tour the ship after it had docked. "People were on their way to work, and even though they knew the ship was coming, were not planning on taking a tour until they saw its immense size," she says.
The PR launch team, including Cohen and seven other Porter Novelli execs, stayed on the vessel during the week to quickly meet any event needs. Princess Cruises' Director of PR Julie Benson oversaw the agency efforts and the inaugural program efforts.
Smooth Sailing
The media relations campaign achieved the greatest publicity impact of any ship launch in Princess history, according to Cohen. That success included more than 700 television placements, reaching more than 170 million viewers on such shows as Good Morning America, The View, CBS This Morning, Inside Edition, CNN Headline News and CNBC Market Watch. This straight audience figure surpassed that achieved for the Dawn Princess launch in May 1997 which exceeded 115 million viewers.
Nineteen national TV crews, 23 major market TV crews and 15 radio stations invited on board resulted in national coverage. Princess also webcast the ship's christening, conducted a satellite media tour with company spokesman Gavin MacLeod (of "Loveboat" fame) and held a special dinner reception with tours of the ship for the print media. Additional coverage came when TV's Judge Judy presided over a wedding at the first chapel at sea.
Travel & Leisure magazine Cruise Editor Kimberly Robinson was among the journalists who toured the ship. The PR materials touting that the Grand Princess is higher than Niagara Falls, longer than three football fields and wider than the Panama Canal got her attention, she said.
"Such information paints a vivid picture and makes a strong connection with my reader." The detailed timeline of the week's festivities highlighting times, exact locations and a short description of the week's inaugural activities was also a plus, she says. "The more reporting done by the firm, the more likely the event will make it into our magazine."
Robinson, who gets about 30 press releases a month, says many times she is scrambling to get event information on the phone when the people she needs to talk to are unreachable because they are already at the event she wants to cover. Grand Princess was sold out for its entire first Europe season and Time magazine highlighted it in its "Nation and the World Year in Review" segment. Princess has two more launches scheduled soon for ships which are twins of the Grand Princess. (PN, 212/601-8000; Travel & Leisure 212/827-6436; http://www.grandprincess.com)