Today in Life After Advertising news, Celebrity Cruises (which is, of course, part of the Royal Caribbean line) just announced the hire of Peter Giorgi as its first-ever chief marketing officer. He begins the new gig on April 15th.
This news is interesting for a couple of reasons: first, Giorgi is a longtime agency veteran who spent eight years in accounts/management roles at CP+B working on such accounts as vitaminwater and Jose Cuervo (which we have very, very good reason to believe is now back with Crispin after McCann resigned the business last November).
He joins the cruise world from Airbnb, where he was global head of advertising and content for nearly two years and got credits on all the TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A. campaigns.
Finally, it would seem that Celebrity wants to grow much faster in a period following a creative review that saw the account go to Venables Bell & Partners. The company also recently expanded its fleet by purchasing the company Ocean Adventures.
In a post today on travel blog Skift, Giorgi says that he thinks the cruise industry is ready for some big moves…if not the type of “disruption” that his previous employer wreaked on the hotel industry.
From that interview:
“The moment that I toured one of the Celebrity ships and was faced head-on with just how incredible that offering is, I knew that there was just an unbelievable opportunity to market this brand and this product and this experience.”
He continues:
“I don’t think the cruise industry needs to be disrupted in the same way, but that doesn’t mean there’s not work to do … I think there are a number of opportunities and maybe moments of not necessarily friction, but possible tension or other things that have become status quo that I’m intrigued and anxious to get in and think about in a really deep way.”
According to Skift, he sees “big potential for marketing especially in the digital and mobile space,” and his boss Lisa Lutoff-Perlo told the blog earlier this year that she’s “sick of the same sameness” in cruise marketing.
VB&P’s first campaign launched in January and riffed on “Marco Polo” back when Senator Rubio was still the GOP’s Great Latino Hope.
Regarding the cruise line’s rebranding efforts, Giorgi says, “It’s just about adding more context and telling a bigger story. We’ve got the plot and I just want to add more chapters to it.”
Sounds like he might have some big changes planned.