(TAN): Costa Cruises has launched its new online advertising campaign “The holiday we miss” (la vacanza che ci manca). The campaign, which evokes one of the Italian Company’s most memorable and successful advertisements, will be online on all Costa’s digital channels in six European markets: Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The campaign will be a trip down memory lane not only for cruisers but for the general public as a whole – this is because it ties in with Costa’s famous former slogan “The holiday you’re missing”, which was the basis of another series of ads that are imprinted in many consumers’ memories.
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Those commercials wittily portrayed the difficulty of readjusting to the daily grind after a vacation on a Costa ship. The new campaign again hinges on the concept of “missing” a holiday, this being more topical than ever at the moment, but develops and adapts the idea, turning it into a message of recovery and optimism for cruising and tourism as a whole, which came to a standstill in March.
In fact, for the last couple of months Costa Cruises has been inundated with photos, comments and messages from its most loyal guests, who can’t wait to come back on board. For this reason, in April the Company decided to officially launch a collection of these treasured cruise moments with an international campaign using Costa’s social media and direct marketing channels, and at the same time inspiring its cruise bloggers and the various communities of brand lovers.
The response has been overwhelming: over 6000 contributions showing highlights of life on board, the joy of discovering new destinations, and the splendor of sunsets at sea that form the visual part of the new advertising campaign and were also used for the copy. This approach based on actual user-generated content conveys a positive message of optimism and expresses the shared desire to start cruising again and – more generally – to cure that sense of wanderlust.
Costa Cruises Vice President Global Marketing Francesco Muglia explains: “As a major brand in tourism we decided that our new campaign, which is also a communication platform, should be an upbeat message about revival of the industry and that it should be conveyed very positively with the involvement of the Company’s key stakeholders: our guests. It’s a way of sharing those special feelings that they have experienced together with us and that we’re all looking forward to enjoying again.”
The “hero video”, the core of the campaign used to grab attention, is a mélange of user-generated content. The female voice-over explains that it won’t be long before we’re experiencing feelings and moments like those depicted on screen, though this time they’ll be even more memorable. The slogan “The holiday we miss” appears together with the hashtags #CRUISINGSOON and #RIPARTIAMOINSIEME, which Costa has been using on its social media since March.
The video was conceived and created by DUDE, under the guidance of the two creative directors Livio Basoli and Lorenzo Picchiotti.
In addition to the video, launched on all Costa’s (social, Direct Marketing, Trade) channels, on the Company’s consumer website www.costacrociere.it a “holiday wall” will provide space for the many contributions that continue to flood in. Costa’s social media channels will add continuity to the campaign, hosting fresh content contributed by users.
