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Royal Caribbean cruise line is one of Haiti’s largest foreign investors. The company operates a private beach resort for cruise ship passengers on the country’s north coast, and is doing a great deal to help in the earthquake relief effort. But for several days after the 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on 12 January, you wouldn’t have known any of that from the company’s home page, which featured only blue skies and good times as far as the eye could see.
To past passengers and others who know of the company’s close connection to Haiti, the absence of any acknowledgment of the catastrophe on the home page—the company’s doorstep to the world—seemed callous.
“It’s like not lowering a flag to half mast when a significant loss occurs,” said Leslie Hetherington, immediate past president of IABC/Toronto, and past Royal Caribbean passenger.
It could also have left people with the false impression that Royal Caribbean was not responding to the crisis when, in fact they were responding quite aggressively.
The lesson: Perception matters. If you’re an organization that’s doing something to help Haiti, you need to make it easy for customers and stakeholders to find out—not because you’re a publicity hound, but because people might think you’re doing nothing if they don’t easily see evidence to the contrary.
Royal Caribbean issued a press release three days after the earthquake outlining its humanitarian response. It was substantial. It included a pledge of at least US$1 million in relief, deliveries of goods and supplies and a donation of all revenue generated through its Haitian port-of-call, Labadee. Guests could even use their onboard charge account to give to a special relief fund set up by the nonprofit organization Food for the Poor. Passengers, who reportedly gave their ship’s captain a standing ovation upon learning they would be honoring the request of the Haitian government that the cruise liner continue its itinerary to Labadee, spent their dollars in record numbers on souvenirs and services offered by the Haitian locals.
Good stuff.
To get the news, however, you had to visit the web site’s Press Center, a backwater for journalists and PR types.
Not so good.
In social media, the company has continued to report its daily deals via Twitter. The day following the quake, its Twitter handle spouted “7-Night Mexican Riviera cruise from just US$549,” but still not so much as a mention of the devastation.
There was actually excellent information about the relief response and the decision to keep Labadee on the itinerary on CEO Adam Goldstein’s blog, which also feeds the company’s Facebook fan page. Both are linked from Royal Caribbean’s home page, but the links gave no indication you’d find news about Haiti there.
My family and I, and many thousands of others, visited Haiti thanks to a Royal Caribbean cruise. It was hardly a cultural immersion. Labadee is a gated enclave for cruise ship passengers where carefully screened vendors offer hair braiding and locally made trinkets. Still, as someone who had that experience—and who thinks highly of Royal Caribbean—I went to their web site in the days following the earthquake eager to see what the company was doing in response.
And I saw nothing.
Royal Caribbean would eventually remedy this. A week following the earthquake, a prominent link to relief effort information had been placed in a home page photo slideshow. It cycles through amid postcards of fun and sun, and remains as of this writing.
While I’d prefer a dedicated link, I appreciate the cruise line’s dilemma. Vacation marketing is all about leaving your troubles behind. Addressing a human tragedy in that context is a delicate matter. But the company misjudged the enormity of this particular disaster. And they misjudged the connection that their cruise line fans make between Haiti and Royal Caribbean.
Whether or not a home page carried links or not is surely a paltry affair in the eyes of a company whose Haitian employees and crew members are dealing with matters of life and death. Thirty-four of their own crew members are still missing. Scores more are mourning for family, friends and the nation itself.
Still, I believe people’s initial disappointment with Royal Caribbean’s “silent” home page is a valid response that reveals an important lesson for communicators in this social media age: Marketers no longer get to run the conversation the way they once did. Consumers today expect to be part of the conversation. They want to know that there’s a real person in there somewhere, behind the billboard.
John Patella is managing partner of Patella Ink Creative Communications in New Jersey. He welcomes comments at
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