The document discusses Carnival Cruise Line's crisis communication strategy following two incidents in 2012-2013 that damaged its reputation and reduced bookings and revenue. It outlines Carnival's mission to provide exceptional cruise experiences. The strategy involves researching the brand's reputation, planning a 5-step crisis communication plan focusing on transparency, and executing the plan through collaboration, cooperation and communication both internally and externally, while pushing away negative media and regaining customer loyalty.

1. Situation Analysis
Over the years of 2012 and 2013, Carnival Cruise line experienced
crisis communication on a whole new level with the sinking of
Costa Concordia that resulted in 32 passenger deaths and the
infamous “poop cruise” incident. From this analysis, our
consumer confidence rankings went down and we were no longer
at the top of the cruise food chain. Many bookings dropped as
well as revenue and the overall reputation of the corporation. The
brand percentage dropped more than 50 points through out our
lowest point.
It is important to Carnival Corporation that we put our
consumers first and foremost make sure that we are being
transparent through our process. While solving these issues, we
always want to research, plan, execute and evaluate efficiently.
There are three key elements that we want to look at when
solving a crisis: collaboration, cooperation and
communication.
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MISSION
Our mission is to take the
world on vacation and
deliver exceptional
experiences through
many of the world's best-
known cruise brands that
cater to a variety of
different geographic
regions and lifestyles, all
at an outstanding value
unrivaled on land or at
sea.
FAST FACTS
• More than 100 Ships
Sailing under 10 brands
• Over 100,000 Employees
Word-wide
• Serve about 10 millions
passengers a year
• Averages 9,300 lbs of
recycling every 7 day
cruise
• 44.1 Billion in total
economic activity to the
US in 2013
SAILING AWAY
How to Hand Crisis Communication

2. RESEARCH
As a corporation, we want to comply the best research for
our crisis to make sure that we excel when planning and
execution.
We want to make sure that we are keeping record of our
brand reputation by tracking purchase consideration.
Carnival Corporation also needs to keep on top of Social
Media research. Who is talking about Carnival? What are
they saying? How should we respond appropriately?
By preparing research, we are able to see what areas of crisis
that we need to address first and exactly how we can
become transparent in our crisis to our consumers and
publics.
PLANNING
Planning for a crisis situation is everything because we want
to be able to execute our plans efficiently and promptly,
leaving room for flexibility and curve balls.
Our overall goal in the planning stage: Restore the
companies reputation.
By restoring our corporations reputation in a crisis, we are
able to gain more consumer trust and start to build our
brand up again.
5 Step Crisis Communication Plan
1.Immediately notify your corporation internally of what
crisis situation you have at stake.
2.Immediately notify any partners, stakeholders, influencers
or donors of the current crisis situation.
3. Immediately release statement addressing the current
crisis that we are held to by being transparent and honest.
Push that release to all of our media outlets.
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Social Media
Research
Especially during a crisis
situation, we need to make sure
that we are staying on top of
our social media platforms.
Twitter: @CarnivalPLC
Facebook: /carnivalcorporation
Gather Information:
What are people saying about
current crisis?
How will we individually
respond to each platform?
Create new media to send out
to each media platform about
the issue.
Create podcast to push to each
platform addressing the current
crisis (5-10 minutes)
Drive away from negative
media outlets or syndicated
media outlets
Develop closer relationships
with media outlets as well as
monitoring and responding to
each media outlet

3. 4. Minimize negative news media about the current crisis situation
5. Create campaign to bring back loyal customers and show Carnival Cooperation into good
light.
EXECUTING
Taking your 5 step planning process, it is now time to execute your crisis plan. It is important to
keep the three C’s in mind when executing: collaboration, cooperation, and
communication.
Collaboration:
When executing, it’s important on who you are collaborating with. During a crisis situation,
we need to make sure that we are collaborating with the right people whether that be
internally or externally. Internally, we need to make sure that we are working together to
collaborate what is best for our corporation. Externally, we need to make sure that we are
collaborating with: media outlets, publics, and consumers. Collaborating will help us
execute our plan to bring Carnival Corporation back on top.
Cooperation:
Delivering a crisis plan can rely on whether or not different outlets are cooperating with
Carnival Corporation whether that be internally or externally. Internally, as a corporation,
we need to make sure that we are cooperating with each other during a crisis. Regarding
cooperation internally, we ask each of our employees to respond positively and cooperate
with us as we are in a time of emergency. As for cooperation externally, as Carnival
Corporation, we strive to preserve good relations with our external units even in a crisis.
Therefore, we will cooperate as a corporation with a positive light in respect for our
company.
Communication:
Thorough communication is key when implementing a crisis plan, both internally and
externally. Internally, communication will take place first and foremost when regarding a
crisis situation. Our communications team will address the issue and send out an
INTERNAL CRISIS PLAN to each of our employees regarding what will be taking place to
get this crisis in control. Each department within our corporation will also be meeting to
ensure that our communication is fluid internally. Externally, Carnival Corporation wants to
make sure that we are communicating to our publics correctly. We want to be able to
answer questions to the best of our ability by still keep Carnival in good light.
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4. Executing the 5 Step Crisis Communication Plan:
(examples from the sinking of the Costa Concordia Cruise ship will follow each step)
1. First and foremost, we will inform our internal community of our crisis (execute by:
email, newsletter, meeting, crisis plan). It is only fair that we as an organization take on a
crisis by letting our internal corporation know of the dilemma that we are facing. By
informing our market, we are able to avoid any miscommunication and inform them of
what information we know and the actions that we are taking to fix the crisis.
Example: When Concordia began to sink, our communications team called an immediate crisis meeting with
the Carnival Corporation, where ever our employees were (cruise ships or separate head quarters) we
made sure that a meeting was called and that they were informed of the crisis situation taking place. After
their meeting, they were given updates on the crisis every hour through email. They were urged to seek out
their communications team for any personal help.
2. After informing our internal employees, we need to inform our partners, stakeholders,
influencers or donors of our current crisis situation (execute by: email, phone call,
meeting, newsletter). These constituents have poured a number of either time, effort,
money or all three to our corporation so we must respect the relationship we have with
each individual party.
Example: After we informed our employees, we immediately reached out to our partners, stakeholders,
influencers and donors. We prepped our Board of Directors to make a personal phone call on the
immediate crisis that was happening. After we reached them through phone, we kept them updated on the
crisis through out email every hour.
3. We then must inform our external market regarding: publics, consumers, and media.
This is important because as Carnival Corporation, we must be transparent and uphold
our honesty as a company. To inform the external market of the crisis plan, we must
prepare a press release and push to every media outlet that we see best fit. We want to
initiate the problem, explain why it happen and what we are doing to fix the problem.
Example: In this crisis, it involved our own consumers, several who lost their life to the sinking. We
immediately want to make sure that we have information as quickly as we can on who has passed, who is in
the hospital or who is missing. It is crucial that we communicate family to the family what we are doing to
asset the situation. In the midst of that, our head of PR created a press release to send out to different media
outlets to explain to them the crisis that is at hand. The release was sent to every major news station and also
sent on our social media platforms. The CEO of Carnival Corporation publicly addressed the crisis on a news
station.
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5. 4. Pushing negative media away from Carnival Corporation is next on the list in this crisis
dilemma. We want to be able to pull our research from our different media and social
media outlets to see exactly what people are saying about the crisis at hand. We want to
push the greatness of Carnival Corporation and show that there is still good in our
company.
Example: Our communications and media team were working closely to monitor every media site
that had mentioned our crisis. We had a team working on responding to different tweets,
Facebook posts, blogs posts, etc. and also a team who created a storytelling campaign called
“Good News”, stories not previously told by Carnival Corporations. With this campaign, we used it
as a “platform to discuss our companies growth and underscore efforts to leverage scale to
improve guest experiences.”
5. We then want to make sure that we still have our loyal customers and that we continue
to attain them. We want to let them know that their voice is being heard and that we are
on their side in the long run. We want to reassure them that being a part the Carnival
community has been worth their time and that we loving having them apart of our
company.
Example: To retain our customer loyalty, we “developed a new corporate website to serve as a
central hub for advanced storytelling”. Therefore, when our customers went to our website, they
were immediately struck with our “good news” stories and we want to reminded them of why they
were a customer in the first place.
RESULTS:
As Carnival Corporation, we always want to make sure that we key in our results from a
crisis situation and use them to help us evaluate ourselves as a corporation.
Regarding the 2012 Costa Concordia Cruise crisis, by 2014 “YouGov's BrandIndex
declared Carnival “the most-improved U.S. brand in consumer perception””.
“YouGov BrandIndex wrote, “While Carnival’s perception comeback is impressive, it is
accompanied with rising purchase consideration levels,” even noting that “(Carnival’s)
sales potential with consumers has rebounded above the rest of the cruise sector.””
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6. COMPARING OTHER ORGANIZATIONS CRISIS:
“Sea Sick”
Royal Caribbean is known to not handle communication and execution when it comes to crisis
management.
In January, on of Royal Caribbean’s cruise ships, Explorer of the Seas had to cut their trip short
by two day because of an “outbreak of gastrointestinal illness that spiked over the weekend”.
They sent out an immediate but very nonchalant press release. The action that was taken was
little but they did compensate for each guess, depending on the degree of which they were sick.
Their message was not thorough enough and did not give enough detail regarding the illness that
had broken on the ship. They did the right the through compensation, but they definitely did not
execute just how sorry they were for the outbreak or how much they cared.
Why this solution? Well looking at it, this was a simple and easy way out for Royal Caribbean.
No media or public speaking but a simple press release just so they “addressed” the issue.
What should they have done? If they would have looked at our crisis communication plan, they
would have seen that putting our publics first if by far the most important. We want to
confidently ensure them that we are doing everything in our power to correct the crisis situation
and also apologize to them without question.
http://bernsteincrisismanagement.com/royal-caribbean-latest-cruise-line-sink-crisis-management/
“Open Mic”
Southwest airlines has been applauded in the past for their efficiency with using social media
during a crisis.
In 20011, a pilot accidentally left his mic on and relayed some inappropriate and
“uncomplimentary” words regarding some of his flight crew. Upset by the words, a crew member
turned them into a local news station. Fortunately the story did not get much attention the first
day but, “Southwests vice president jumped into action anyways by recording a video about how
the comments were to not be tolerated and posted it to an internal site”.
The story did eventually break news on the “fourth day, reaching 3,000 stories and 10,000 Social
Media comments” but Southwest was prepared for the outbreak because of the action taken a
few days earlier.
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7. Why this solution? By the VP stepping in and taking the crisis into his hands, he was allowing for
his team to be prepared for when the story did break the news. Flaningan stated, "We're busier
when there's nothing going on because we are constantly preparing and altering our contingency
plans to address things that could happen”. It was definitely smart to take action right away and
this is an example that Carnival Corporation can learn from.
What else could they have done? There isn’t any record of the actual pilot responding to the
crisis situation, but the pilot should have addressed a sympathetic apology to his staff and all
board members, as well as the Southwest Corporation.
http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/How_Southwest_Airlines_wrangled_four_social_media_46254.aspx
“Cancelled Flight”
In April of 2013, American Airlines faced a major PR crisis when more than 1,000 of their flights
were cancelled.
The first day of the crisis, many passengers were “offered little information and that the airline
seemed to be at a dead halt”. That night, the CEO addressed the issue featuring an apology to
the public. “Throughout the day our people have been working very hard to take care of our
customers and keep everyone informed,” he says. “We communicated with our customers and
our people through every channel.”
The next day, they promised to have the flights back and running but “the airline was still facing
customer backlash on different social media platforms”. The airline responded to customers that
day through out their media platforms.
Why this solution? Well, this crisis really did catch American Airlines off guard but you can tell
by their presentation that they were not at all prepared for the catastrophe that hit them.
Essentially the CEO addressed that they did the best that they could in his video.
What else could they have done? A lot. The fact that the CEO did not release a press statement
until that night is a no. Someone should have taken action immediately. Customers left hanging
with questions? You should always try to avoid that in a crisis situation. American Airlines should
have relayed information of the system failure immediately. They should have also looked at
compensation for their customers to regain customer loyalty.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130417/NEWS06/130419806/american-airlines-faces-
pr-crisis-with-canceled-flights
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8. ABOUT CARNIVAL CORPORTAION
“Carnival Corporation & plc is anAmerican-British cruise company and the world's largest cruise
ship operator, with a combined fleet of over 100 vessels across 10 cruise line brands, with the fathom
brand announced for launch in 2016. Carnival’s unprecedented rise to the world’s largest cruise
operator can be attributed to its ability to manage brand autonomy, with each major cruise line
maintaining separate sales, marketing and reservation offices, as well as through the industry’s most
aggressive shipbuilding program.”
Sources:
http://www.prsa.org/SearchResults/Download/6BE-1509A2809/0/
Carnival_Corporation_Navigating_the_World_s_Leadin
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=140690&p=irol-index
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