Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

One of the interesting things about social media is that there are numerous services which track "what's tending now." Certain applications can also track words or phrases which are dominating the news.

I like to use TweetDeck as well as Monitter to follow trends involving the cruise industry.

"Carnival cruise" has been trending all week at a frantic pace. And the news is not good.

The cumulative effect of the recent cruise ship fires, power failures and images of passengers on disabled cruise ships complaining about toilets over-flowing has turned Carnival's reputation into a joke.

Carnival's "fun ships" have been ridiculed on Saturday Night Live, David Letterman & Jay Leno, and featured in MAD Magazine (see below). 

Consider some of the comments which are twirling on Twitter right now:

Packing for my Carnival cruise: tent, sleeping bag for deck, iodine pills, generator, Cipro.

We all lose if CBS doesn't film the next Survivor aboard a Carnival Cruise Ship

Maybe we should shut down Abu Ghraib prison and send the terrorists on a Carnival Cruise

I wouldn't go on a Carnival cruise right now even if it were free

One of the secrets to Carnival Cruise’s unsinkable business model: free Coast Guard rescues

They have so many cruise commercials because Carnival is just sinking

Even with the 50% discount from Carnival it will be difficult to go on that cruise line again

Carnival cruise boats are shit LOL dont know why ppl go on them...

Decisions. Decisions. Trying to decide whether to take a Carnival Cruise or just stay at home and shit my pants

My new punishment for my 12 year old daughter: Do your chores or I'll send you on a Carnival Cruise

if its a carnival, there's a 96.13% chance something will go wrong and youll get a free cruise out of it... Have fun!

Last week I posed a question on Twitter whether Carnival was the Wal-Mart of the high seas? Several people said no way - don't insult Wal-Mart, Carnival is more like K-Mart.

What's the funniest comment about Carnival you have heard on Twitter this week? Join the discussion on our Facebook page.

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I have always wondered how the cruise industry PR people do it.  

They face non-stop bad cruise news. The Splendor fire. The Concordia deaths. The Allegra fire.  The Triumph fire.  Plus another 10 cruise ship fires, 50 norovirus outbreaks and more shipboard rapes than you can count in just 3 years.

Yet, the cruise line public relations employees put their happy faces on and pull out their talking points. Cruise ship fires, crimes, deaths and disappearances are "rare" they say. Cruising is "absolutely" safe they promise. The safety of passenger is the cruise industry's highest priority, they proclaim. 

But fewer and fewer people seem to believe the cruise lines shtick. 

The usually friendly-to-the-cruise-lines reporters at the Miami Herald are even writing some articles that suggest that cruising may be suffering an image problem.

The Herald just published "Americans Think Less of Cruising after Carnival Triumph Fire, Poll Says."  A Harris Poll of 2,230 adults showed that "trust" and "perceived quality" of Carnival and other cruise lines dropped "significantly."

According to the poll, 58 percent of people who have never taken a cruise say they are less likely to try one now than they were a year ago. 

On the same day the poll was released, Forbes announced that Carnival CEO Micky Arison's fortunes increased one billion dollars last year, from $4.7 billion to $5.7 billion.

With all of Carnival's deferred maintenance of its cruise ships, exploitation of its crew members, refusal to reimburse the U.S. federal government for Coast Guard expenses in responding to disabled ships, and avoidance of U.S. corporate taxes by registering itself in Panama, how do the cruise PR representatives spin the news today of cruise tycoon Arison's enormous wealth?

Image Credit:  A Bruising For Cruising  (NetBase)

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This weekend I clicked on Royal Caribbean's website to read the cruise line president's "Why Not?" blog which is on the cruise line website called the "Nation of Why Not." 

Believe it or not, I like reading what cruise line CEO's write about.   It's interesting to me to see the disconnect between the usually mundane things the cruise executives promote compared to missing passengers, shipboard crimes and norovirus outbreaks which the executives don't want you to know about.

You may recall that back in 2008 Royal Caribbean abandoned its high energy and highly successful Get Out There! marketing campaign, which featured videos of passengers hiking on a glacier, dog sledding and kayaking, while a upbeat tune with a heavy base blared out the refrain of Iggy Pop's Lust for Life!  Quite frankly, I would sometimes find myself humming that damn song after a Royal Caribbean ad would come on the TV.

For reasons not clear to me, Royal Caribbean discarded the brilliant Get Out There! theme.  Instead of the dynamic images of active cruise vacationers, Royal Caribbean introduced a new marketing campaign called the "Nation of Why Not."

I thought that the cruise line had lost its mind.  It replaced the high octane energy of its Get Out There! campaign with odd images of the whimsical and lackadaisical Nation of Why Not.   Was the cruise line trying to compete with Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman's What Me Worry motto?  Why walk away from the positive energy of Get Out There! and replace it with the ambivalent if not negative karma of a marketing slogan with the word NOT in it?

I clicked on the Nation of Why Not link on the bottom right corner of the Royal Caribbean home page to read the president's Why Not? blog.  But instead of entering the Why Not nation, I was directed instead to a page named "Answer It Royally."

Where did the Nation of Why Not go?  The cruise president's Why Not? blog also disappeared, replaced with a blog called Sea Views.

What's going on?  Did the cruise line abandon its marketing concept?  Did Royal Caribbean tell the citizens of Why Not that their nation no longer existed?

So I looked around on the internet.  But I couldn't find anything.  The cruise president's last article on the new Sea Views blog was about how important it is to blog as a CEO and, ironically enough, the need to maintain brand loyalty.  It was strange to read someone talking about the concept of brand loyalty instead of actually practicing it. 

How about an explanation regarding whether the Why Not? mantra is being replaced with "Answer it Royally?"  And what does "Answer it Royally" mean anyway? 

The only information I could find about what appears to be a new marketing theme is that Royal Caribbean trademarked the phrase "The Sea is Calling.  Answer it Royally."  OK, now I get it.  Cute, I suppose.  

Royal Caribbean just filed its application for the new service mark on September 13th.  Perhaps there will be some type of announcement from the marketing and web agency people in the future about all of this?

Loyal-to-Royal cruise fans, did I miss something in the last couple of months?  Do you know what happened to the Nation of Why Not?  What do you think about the Answer it Royally theme?

I say bring back the Get Out There! videos and turn Iggy Pop's Lust for Life on full blast.

December 12, 2011 Update:  A reader brought to my attention that Royal Caribbean's new ad  debuted in October in Spanish ("El Mar Te Llama").  You can watch it here.  

Another reader pointed out that if you type in "the sea is calling" dot com, you go to a Royal Caribbean's facebook page which has the new video.

Cruisemates published an article today discussing the cruise line's new national ad campaign which you can read here.   Royal Caribbean invited some members of the media to a conference call this morning and introduced the new ad. 

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