Sailing Beyond Borders
Celebrity Cruises has boldly set a course into the trouble waters of the US Election, launching its new advertising campaign at the conclusion of the first debate between presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Sept. 26, reports Bob Mowat in this week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press.
Dubbed Sail Beyond Borders – http://www.celebritycruises.com/htmlpage/beyond-borders – the campaign’s narrative offers a clear and powerful message:
“Far from the talk of building walls. Far from the threats of keeping people out. Far from the rhetoric of fear is a world of differences. Differences that expand and enrich us, because after all our lives aren’t made better when we close ourselves off to the world. They are made better when we open ourselves up to it.”
In explaining the new campaign, Celebrity’s president & CEO, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, writes in a blog post entitled We’ve Always Sailed Beyond Borders — And Why That Matters Today: “A year ago, if you’d told me that encouraging people to travel the world was a ‘political statement,’ I’d have been speechless. Exploring the world, encountering cultures, befriending people from other places — to me, that’s learning and growing. That’s life, that’s common sense. That’s the very best part of the business we’re in.”
Lutoff-Perlo makes it clear that while the new, “Sail Beyond Borders” adverts show people the “beautiful world out there” and, naturally, invite those viewers to explore it aboard a Celebrity cruise – “because that’s what travel ads do, right?” – there is more to them than that.
“The ads also address two topics that a year ago would have been utterly non-controversial: we don’t believe in building walls between people, and we don’t believe fear should hold anyone back from experiencing the world,” said Celebrity’s president & CEO.
Is this a political statement? Lutoff-Perlo asks, before answering: “I guess they are now. Even though they represent a view that I — and many others in the travel industry — have held for decades. We don’t divide, we connect; we don’t enclose, we expand. And the logic and the humanity of that approach is apparent to all of us at Celebrity Cruises every single day, because it enriches the lives of every single person involved in our business.”
She points out, in this respect, that Celebrity employs men and women from over 50 countries around the world so that each of its ships is an “amazing world in miniature.”
For the full story, check out this week’s digital edition of Canadian Travel Press by clicking here.
