Get thousands of people to come to our Caribbean festival
Purpose of the Communication:
Southampton, one of the UK’s busiest and premier cruise ports, is recognised as ‘the capital of the country’s cruise industry’ Associated British Ports, 2007. Port of Southampton. www.abports.co.uk. Yet Southampton’s port itself suffers from a lack of public awareness, even though it often has such well-known ships as the QE2 and Ventura (P&O’s latest cruise liner) docked.
This April, however, Royal Caribbean’s The Independence of the Seas arrived in Southampton for her naming ceremony. As this is the largest cruise ship in the world, weighing in at more than 160,000 tons she was bound to capture the media’s attention.
In order to capitalise on the occasion, Southampton City Council decided to organise a Caribbean Festival. This was firstly to increase public awareness of The Independence of the Seas and secondly, to showcase her on-board activites, as Royal Caribbean is trying to appeal to a wider, younger audience – without alienating its traditional market.
Carswell Gould was asked by Southampton City Council to develop a campaign to promote the festival and to encourage people to attend the free event at Mayflower Park, over the weekend of the 26th and 27th April. The main objectives were to create a buzz in the city surrounding the ship’s arrival, whilst at the same time increasing brand awareness and showing an effective working partnership between Royal Caribbean, Southampton City Council and Business Southampton.
Our delivery:
The campaign material needed not only to attract the attention of a wide range of audiences, but also to reflect the lively and exciting nature of the festival, whilst working across several different platforms, such as Posters, DL Leaflets, Outdoor Banners and Online Marketing.
The main aim was to promote and reflect the festival’s content, illustrating the wide array of free activities on offer. Carswell Gould worked closely with the Council to develop competitions to encourage footfall; these competitions were not only publicised through printed marketing material but also through broadcast media on Wave FM.
The use of hot and vibrant colours combined with illustrations evocative of the Caribbean were used to capture the fun and exciting nature of the event, while maintaining the city’s image with the use of Southampton’s own typeface. To give the event its own personal identity, a logo was developed in the style of the hand-painted signs in the Caribbean, which could work across any application to make the event’s promotional material easily recognisable.
Carswell Gould carefully selected images of The Independence of the Seas which could work across any part of the campaign. The images were selected to show an aerial view, an angle that wouldn’t be visible from Mayflower Park but would illustrate the enormity and sheer scale of the ship.
Results:
The success of the festival was evident from the thousands who attended the event. The temporary beach put in place in Mayflower Park proved a great success, allowing vistors a grandstand view of the ship.