Carnival Cruise Line, which was NewmanPR’s second-biggest client after the Florida Keys Tourism Board (I was the lead on the Carnival account for 25 years), has long carefully crafted its corporate and product image as irrevocably tied to fun. After all, the fleet is called the “Fun Ships” and the line’s first national TV advertising campaign featured Kathie Lee Gifford singing “Ain’t We Got Fun.”
In my storied 30-year career in cruise line public relations, there were only a few times when I made an actual creative contribution of an idea for what turned out to be a highly effective PR stunt. That wasn’t for lack of trying — we spitballed events and ideas all the time — but this time all the elements lined up perfectly for an event aboard Carnival Paradise at Port of Tampa.
There has been a fair amount of recent media coverage of norovirus (or winter vomiting disease, AKA the “cruise ship virus”) outbreaks on cruise ships, and I was reminded of the first instance of a ship being removed from service due to norovirus. It was August 2002, and the ship was Holland America Line’s MS Ryndam.
I live in a beautiful place just outside of Tampa, Florida, called Temple Terrace. It was named, not after a place of religious worship, but after the half-million temple orange trees that covered the place in terraces in the 1920s.