Carnival sails into Super Bowl

The Super Bowl can be a bumpy ride for advertisers – especially newbies – but that's not stopping Carnival, the world's biggest cruise line, from getting on board for the first time to try attract new business and dress-up its image.

Carnival, of course, is the line whose ship Triumph became a PR disaster in early 2013, when it got stuck at sea for almost a week because of an engine fire. Ingloriously dubbed the "Poop Cruise" by the media, the passengers endured some hallways flooded with human waste and a lack of running water and air conditioning.

Since then, however, Carnival has bounced back. Its bookings are up. Its year-over-year earnings growth was 15% in the third quarter of this year. And in July, YouGov Brand Index ranked the Carnival Cruise Line brand as the most-improved U.S. brand in consumer perception.

The Super Bowl makes sense for a big cruise line. It falls right in the heart of cruise booking season and there's no better incentive to book a cruise than a snowstorm that traps you inside for a day or two. Perhaps that's why, in 1998, Royal Caribbean was a title sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show.

Now, with the economy and business improving, Carnival is turning to the Super Bowl to market together – for the first time – all nine of its brands, which include Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America, Princess Cruises, Cunard, Seaborn, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises in Australia and the U.K. and Costa Cruises. Of the 10 million, or so, folks who hop a cruise each year, almost half book with Carnival Cruise Line.

"It's the world's largest marketing stage and we believe we have the right story to tell, " says Ken Jones, vice president of group marketing at Carnival Corp. "The Super Bowl is the perfect platform to tell people that we have these nine brands.

But that won't be simple, warns brand guru Peter Madden. The cruise industry has "suffered a tidal wave of negative publicity that many consumers have not forgotten," he says. "In advertising on the Super Bowl, Carnival will be doing the heavy lifting for every cruise line in terms of shoring up faith in cruises being a safe option."

But Carnival executives say this campaign is mostly about convincing folks who have never cruised before to give it a try.

"We wanted to present a disruptive picture of cruising," says Wil Boudreau, chief creative officer at BBDO Atlanta, the agency behind the campaign. "There's not a Hawaiian shirt or pina colada within 1,000 miles" of this ad.

In advance of the game consumers will be asked to use social media to help pick from four potential Carnival ads the one 60-second spot that will air on the game.

One candidate likely to garner plenty of votes is filled with sexual double-speak about everyone's "first time." It isn't made clear until the ad's very end that it's actually talking about first-time cruise-goers. Or, as they ad calls them, "cruise virgins."

There's one heck of an incentive to get folks to vote. One lucky voter will win a cruise a year – up to seven days annually – for the rest of their lives.

For one click, that's a lot of nautical miles.

You can see and vote on the ads onCarnival's website for the ad challenge.