Go Get Funderstruck with Carnival Cruise

Tina T
Marketing in the Age of Digital
2 min readOct 24, 2022

Before Carnival came up with the word Funderstruck, people have been experiencing the feeling of Funderstruck for 50 years.

You are probably wondering what is Funderstruck and what does it mean?

Funderstruck is defined as “The unmistakable feeling you get when you Choose Fun on Carnival; shocked and amazed by the power of fun; the feeling of being shamelessly joyful; a shockwave of fun; a shared euphoria.”

A new marketing campaign launched in December 2021 introduced Funderstruck. The Funderstruck campaign is an extension to Carnival’s Choose Fun campaign that was launched in 2018.

The brand objectives and goals of Carnival is to get people to choose fun through the experience with others on a Carnival Cruise. The actions they want their target audience to do is book with Carnival Cruise since there won’t be mistakes doing so. To get people to book with Carnival, they launched the Funderstruck campaign to highlight the fun and enjoyable experience when cruising together with friends and family.

Funderstruck message and content was introduced and used on Carnival’s owned channels, out of home placements, on national TV commercials like ESPN and ABC during Christmas and New Year’s Eve, podcasts, and social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.

Campaign Success

Early in the pandemic, the entire cruise industry was affected due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Ultimately, this led to suspension of operations. After a 16-month pause, Carnival finished up 2021 by restarting their guest operations.

For 2022, Carnival planned to be back to full guest operations by March, in time for Carnival Cruise Line’s 50th birthday. With less restriction, Carnival planned to grow guest capacity to more than pre-pandemic levels. After dropping mandatory testing for guests, booking activity for Carnival Cruise soared and nearly doubled pre-pandemic levels.

With people looking to travel again and go on vacation, cruising is making a comeback. In order to get people to continue booking cruises with Carnival in the future, Carnival needs to focus on safety so that there can be a sense of trust built with cruise passengers. The way Carnival Cruise handles COVID and safety protocols through their communication and actions can affect booking with Carnival.

“Funderstruck is the unmistakable feeling when you choose fun on Carnival, and the kind of joyful experience essential to people’s health and happiness,” said Pete Callaro, senior vice president of brand and product marketing for Carnival Cruise Line. “Carnival cruises are the perfect vacation to enjoy with those you’ve missed having fun with over the past year.”

There is one thing for sure. That is, not everyone can experience the feeling of Funderstruck. A Carnival cruise is the only place to get Funderstruck.

Have fun and get Funderstruck with Carnival Cruise!

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