For a while, the cruise industry was on shaky ground water. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

More than 31 million people are projected to go on cruises this year, an uptick from 2019 numbers, according to the Cruise Lines International Association’s State of the Cruise Industry 2023 report. Last quarter, Royal Caribbean Group said the “seven biggest booking weeks” in its history had occurred since November.

Marketing Brew sat down with Royal Caribbean International CMO Kara Wallace to hear about how the company is marketing its cruises now that the industry is bouncing back.

Your marketing strategy has evolved to target younger millennial families. Could you talk a little bit about that?

It’s been our marketing strategy really since 2015 with the launch of our “Come Seek” campaign, which was an invitation to the next generation of cruisers, focused on millennial families…“Come Seek” has really been our overarching marketing campaign. It gave us a tone of voice, an energy, a vibe that really has successfully connected with this target of millennial families new to cruises, and one that we’ve continued to be able to build upon.

Recently, we launched Icon of the Seas, the ship that’s going to be the ultimate family vacation…and two weeks ago, we introduced it into Fortnite. That was a way to bring our brands to a place where families are playing [and] exploring. And it’s advertising in its form, but it’s a way that’s really authentic and organic, and an opportunity to have a more immersive exploration of our ship in perhaps a nontraditional format.

Read the full Q&A here.—JS

March Madness has once again come to an end—but before we bid basketball adieu and transition to baseball szn, let’s take a look back at how all the major players showed up at the women’s tournament.

Oh, no. We don’t mean the athletes. We mean the advertisers.

The (ad) roster: Ad inventory for the men’s games was all but sold out by March 8, and in-game sponsorships for the women’s championship were also sold out less than a week later, with 15 broadcast sponsors and almost 100 advertisers onboard, ESPN said. Some of the brands investing in the women’s tournament included Capital One, CarMax, and Xfinity.

Viewership Ws: Brands that went in on the women’s games were rewarded by this year’s record-breaking viewership throughout the tournament. LSU’s win over Iowa in the final match-up averaged 9.9 million viewers, smashing the previous 5.7 million-viewer record for the NCAA women’s tournament set in 2002. It was the most-viewed men’s or women’s college game ever on ESPN+.

Can’t look away: The hand-gesture drama surrounding Iowa star Caitlin Clark and LSU standout Angel Reese likely didn’t hurt audience and advertiser interest in the game, Sebastian Tomich, CCO of The Athletic, told Marketing Brew.

“In terms of women’s sports media, you need some drama,” Tomich said, adding that it “definitely” holds weight with advertisers and audiences alike. The most popular stories on The Athletic usually have some element of drama, typically related to roster construction, trade demands, and contract disputes—storylines that are often absent in women’s sports, he said.

“You need the storylines that go beyond the game,” Tomich told us. “I think as the businesses around the sport start to mature, you’ll get more of that, and in turn, fans will get more interested. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

Read the full story here.—AM

YouTube is known as a video platform, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t interested in getting more involved in audioland.

Is the feeling mutual? There are signs that some major podcast companies are interested in returning the love. The online magazine Slate and the host-read podcast ad marketplace Gumball have each recently shared plans to make YouTube more central to their podcast work.

Clean slate: Slate, which operates a podcast network with shows including Slow Burn and Political Gabfest, is now uploading its podcasts to YouTube in an effort to expand its reach to the platform’s more than 2 billion monthly users, it announced last month.

Posting pods to YouTube is intended to boost discoverability, which remains “one of the biggest challenges across the podcast industry,” Slate’s president and CRO, Charlie Kammerer, said in a statement.

Something to chew on: Gumball, a marketplace for host-read ads that was spun off from comedy podcast network Headgum, is expanding its campaign management platform to YouTube creators and advertisers after beta testing across more than 50 YouTube channels with over 37.5 million subscribers combined, it recently announced.

All adding up: YouTube has been expanding into the podcast space with a number of recent initiatives:

• Late last year, YouTube rolled out host-read video ads for podcasts.
• Earlier this year, at The Verge’s Hot Pod Summit, the Alphabet-owned company announced that it would include podcasts on YouTube Music.
• And last month, we reported on a new ad offering that lets YouTube advertisers target users based on their favorite songs.

But wait: While many podcasters post their shows to YouTube, some have reportedly been underwhelmed with YouTube’s efforts.

Click here for the full story.—AM

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

AI: If you’re still confused about it, don’t worry. Here’s a guide that can help you get a grasp on the basics.

TV: Women ages 18–34 love the classics, like Grey’s Anatomy and Gilmore Girls, according to Nielsen.

DEI: Snap’s annual report on diversity “will include two Snap-commissioned studies looking at the diversity of Snap’s partnered content on the Stories page,” which you can read more about here.

Female future: Four female C-suites unpacking AI beyond the hype? Yep, that’s happening at Iterable’s Activation Summit. Enjoy deep dives on what the next generation of the industry will hold. Register now.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Effective, easy-to-use tools and tactics are a marketer’s best friend. Learn from the best in the industry at The Brief.

Grab a ticket to see Solange Claudio, president of Formerly Known As, speak on “How Agencies Are Faring in the New World Order.”

Solange has been working with Formerly Known As, an advertising agency valuing emotional strength, since 2021.

Tune in for some of the most important marketing discussions of the year. Get your tickets today!

Not everyone listens to their music or podcasts with noise-canceling headphones on the subway to block out the sound of the mariachi band in their car. Many people enjoy audio together, aka “co-listen.”

It is “pretty pervasive” these days, according to Jon Gibs, global director and principal data scientist for Spotify Advertising, which recently teamed up with Magna’s Media Trials research unit to conduct a study called “The Togetherness Effect: Why Brands Should Be Paying Attention to Co-Listening.”

About three-quarters (74%) of respondents said they co-listen to digital audio at least once a week. A majority of adult Gen Zers (86%) said the same. The study also found that co-listeners generally tend to be in a positive mood, and that those good vibes can carry over into their perceptions of certain ads if they’re well-targeted.

Methodology: The companies tapped a panel of digital audio listeners—about half co-listeners and half solo listeners—and played them either a test or control ad at random as they were listening to about 30 minutes of digital audio. Then, respondents were asked to complete a survey about their co-listening behaviors, ad opinions, and other brand metrics.

Ad impact: Co-listeners were exposed to “storytelling” and “product-focused” ads. The storytelling ads performed better, the study found, as they over-indexed compared to product ads when respondents were asked if the ad caught their attention, was something they were open to, and improved their perception of the brand.

Targeting: The study found that these are the most common types of moments for co-listening: relaxing, hanging out with friends, cooking, entertaining kids, and doing yoga.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• More than a year out, NBCU’s 2024 Olympics ad sales are “pacing well ahead” of last Summer Games
• Why is everyone talking about Lemon8?
• Why Duolingo is leaning into K-pop