Chef Curtis Stone Partnernship
AMERICAN INHOUSE DESIGN AWARD
2016 WINNER
Background: Curtis Stone is a celebrity chef, award winning restaurateur and NY Times best selling author from Australia. Chef Curtis Stone’s highly acclaimed first solo restaurant, Maude, is widely regarded as “one of the toughest reservations to secure in Los Angeles.”
The Challenge: Developed in partnership with Chef Stone, SHARE, was slated replace Sabatini’s, a Princess favorite Italian restaurant, onboard two ships and at a higher price point. The challenge was to communicate both the value and quality of SHARE to past guests who may have a preference for Sabatini’s, future guests and prospects who may still be in the decision making phase; as well as book reservations.
The Objective: To create awareness for SHARE, positioning it as Curtis Stone’s first restaurant at sea offering an exclusive opportunity to taste his exquisite cuisine via a 6-course fine dining experience.
The Plan: Since Chef Stone is a celebrity chef, it was important we used images of him in the kitchen as much as possible to leverage the equity of his brand. We also made sure to infuse “6-course fine dining” messaging into all touch points in tandem with highly stylized, flavor telling food imagery to trigger taste buds and convey gourmet quality. Hero images of all dishes a guest would receive during a six-course meal at SHARE shown together on a dining table were used to ease any guest hesitations about the value of SHARE at the higher price point.
The Creative: Promoting this partnership required a robust cross platform communications strategy including: print, online, pre-cruise communications, emails, onboard signage, media events, daily onboard newsletter advertising, in-app advertising, loyalty program publication articles, a video series, crew training sessions, tastings, and more. Shown are just a few samples of the creative.
Video Series: Leading up to the launch of SHARE, the videos garnered awareness, helped guests get to know Chef Stone and provided a sneak peek at some of the dishes from SHARE.
The series included:
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8 Videos each focusing on a different topic
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7 Emails promoting the launch of each video and the launch of SHARE
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A landing page to house the series with a booking CTA
The Results: Onboard surveys showed 91% awareness of SHARE amongst onboard guests.
SHARE pre-cruise emails consistently perform above average with an open rate of over 83% and a click rate of nearly 14%.
Sentiment for the value and quality of the restaurant was mostly positive and covers per voyage were consistent and comparable with other specialty restaurants on ships in the same trades. Revenue was up as a result of higher covers per guest.
632 total placements*
271M total audience reach*
$2.5M+ EAV*
$0.23 CPM
36+ Media Attendees
*Totals include online, social and press release placements.
Pre Cruise Emails: Deployed to booked guests within 3 weeks prior to their sailing