Carnival Ditched “Colgate Smiles” and Montages to Inject Fun Into Cruising Category

Carnival has launched a new local brand platform, ‘Play Away’, to stand out in a category awash with indistinct advertising, and lure Aussies to take their first-ever cruise.

LBB’s Brittney Rigby revealed the platform’s launch last week, and caught up with the team behind the work to understand why the brand chose to break the fourth wall, whether the first local work since acquiring P&O set out to say something new, and how it ladders up to the recently-released global positioning.

Carnival’s senior marketing manager Nicole Bradbury was joined by Innocean’s CD Damon Porter, senior strategist Jack Cornwell, and senior copywriter Bella Smith.

LBB> Breaking the fourth wall by talking directly to the audience, using humour and rhyme, and the snippet of honking cruise horn which ends each ad, all feels very playful. How did you decide which levers to pull to execute an idea all about play?

Bella Smith> Advertising in the cruise category is a sea of sameness. Pun intended. Filled with Colgate smiles, picture-perfect couples and montage ads that cram as many product features as possible into 30 seconds -- every cruise brand ends up blending into one. But in an era where attention is a dwindling resource, ‘safe’ work is actually the riskiest choice because it becomes invisible. We approached this with a mindset of fearless creativity. We had to be brave enough to leave the cookie-cutter casting and montage checklist behind to create something distinct. Our key ambition with this work is to make Carnival stand out in the category. To feel memorable, unmissable, and distinctly us.

Each spot gives a unique kind of Carnival ‘play’ the focus and breathing room it deserves – from dining with dancing waiters to quality family time at an island destination, with more spots yet to come throughout the year.

Yet, the suite of ads are tied together through a number of consistent brand devices. Our playful, original music track, arresting horn mnemonic, opening shot of the ship and, of course, our iconic voice over.

The VO is where our brand tone really shines -- cheeky, self-aware and in tune with the Aussie sense of humour. Angus Sampson’s voice appeals to the everyman -- prompting Australians to feel FOMO and realise the play they’re missing out on. By pairing Angus’ dry, deadpan delivery with our playful visual world, we’re giving the brand a distinct edge that moves us away from category cliches and urges Aussies to Play Away on Carnival.

Damon Porter> It wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision to pull certain levers, more so how we wanted people to feel when watching the campaign, which was FOMO. The dialogue really set the tone early on in the campaign’s development, and everything was built around it from there.

Jack Cornwell> A lot of these decisions were made in the name of brand consistency. Brand tracking showed, despite Carnival being the biggest cruise brand in Australia, it was starting to lose some traction in Australians’ minds. More broadly, comms tracking showed that despite punters liking cruise ads, it was becoming impossible to tell them apart. A big imperative for the brand brief was to stop making nice-but-forgettable ads, and consistently hammer Carnival’s brand assets so we stuck out when people were thinking of booking a cruise.

LBB> The OOH is bold and really relies on the playfulness and impact of that font choice. OOH demands a brutal simplicity or paring back of the idea -- how did you land on the copy and font doing so much heavy lifting?

Bella> When it comes to OOH, less is more. As has been proven, one clear, single-minded message is more likely to stay with the consumer than trying to communicate everything at once. So, we’ve deliberately kept our OOH bold and beautifully simple, using distinct, eye-catching photography and impactful, full-bleed copy -- as though our billboards are invitations to Australia to Play Away on Carnival.

We’ve also produced several contextual billboards that speak to the media placement -- roadside, rail, bus shelters, ferry wharfs. The copy carries the witty, cheeky tone of voice from our TV spots through to OOH -- making Aussies realise the play they’re missing out on during the most mundane moments of their day.

LBB> The radio spots feel almost bedtime story-esque: a calm voice, sea lapping, soft laughter, the slurp of a drink. How did you tackle conveying the mix of relaxation and fun that the TVCs capture?

Bella> As we know all too well, most radio ads are pretty wall-to-wall. Jammed with messaging and proof points. As with TV and OOH, we wanted our radio spots to stand apart, too.

Rather than spelling out the product features of Carnival, we showed them through storytelling. We gave each spot breathing room through clever use of sound design and allowed the audience to imagine themselves in this playful holiday setting during the very moment they feel furthest from it -- the dreaded commute.

More radio spots featuring other kinds of Carnival ‘play’ will go live throughout the year.

LBB> There’s something about speaking directly to the frustrations of real life -- traffic, an ad break -- and contrasting it with the feeling of being on holiday. Is the back-to-work timing of its launch deliberate?

Damon> We saw every medium as an opportunity to induce FOMO, reaching people in their day-to-day, whether they’re listening to radio in the chaos of the morning school run or heading home from peak hour. With both OOH and radio, we started with the placement and format first, then retrofitted the copy around that using the witty tone from our TVCs.

Bella> We created multiple VO variations with Angus for each film spot, each hypertargeting a different viewing environment -- time of day, seasonal occasions, specific programming. This not only made our budget go a lot further, but allowed us to speak more directly to our audience during their most mundane moments of the day.

LBB> I imagine it’s a nuanced category in which to build your brand, vs building the category. How are you thinking about using some of the distinctive assets created in this campaign over the long term, to build memory structures specifically attached to Carnival?

Jack> Mental availability was the number one objective of this brief. Our shared ambition with the Carnival team was to create brand assets and a brand story Carnival could continue to use for the next 20 years. Think ‘Should’ve Gone to Specsavers’ -- no pressure! So, early on in the process, we worked through what those assets were, and were strict about how to use them consistently across our comms.

LBB> This is the first local campaign since Carnival acquired P&O. Is it designed to re-establish truths and a brand tone that already existed for Carnival, or establish something new?

Jack> When P&O was folded into Carnival, brand tracking showed we had work to do to gain the love Australians had for P&O. We also had a few negative perceptions to tackle. The relaxation slant of 100% Holiday wasn’t doing a job of course correcting because it was indistinct, so we wanted to reintroduce Carnival to Australians and make it clear what we stand for.

Nicole Bradbury> It's definitely a reestablishing of who we are. We've been around for more than 50 years. Obviously, a brand changes and evolves over time, but that core essence of fun has really remained the same. We knew that taking on those two new P&O ships in 2025 -- they were going to become part of the Carnival family. We didn't want to dilute the brand essence at all. So it was definitely: reestablish who we were in the market.

And using humour, because Aussies love humour and it resonates so well, and I think in the category, we're really, really well-placed to do that because fun is so ingrained in who we are.

LBB> In the US, the brand launched a campaign in November starring Nick Offerman called ‘Find Your Fun Again’. There are lovely parallels between fun and play -- how do you balance making the brand feel local and connecting it to global campaigns and messaging?

Nicole> The brand essence and the tone need to be consistent and all about fun, and then you tweak it slightly for your audience and for your market. That's why understanding culture and understanding people is so important as a marketer.

You really need to get under the skin of who you're talking to, and we know that humour resonates with Australians, but we also know it really resonates with our guests as well.