Costa's 'Leo' campaign, created by Herezie in February 2022, used real smartphone footage of a three-year-old on the Costa Toscana to launch the brand's new
How Costa and Herezie Made a Three-Year-Old the Face of Cruise Advertising
Costa's 'Leo' campaign is a sixty-second film, published in France in February 2022, built entirely from real smartphone footage shot by a family during a Costa Toscana cruise, featuring a three-year-old child named Leo who refuses to leave the ship at the end of his holiday, used by Costa and agency Herezie to launch the brand's new European creative signature, 'Costa. Believe your eyes.'
Costa selected Herezie to lead the brand's new strategic and creative direction across Europe following an international pitch, as reported by marketingdirecto.com. The appointment was confirmed in February 2022, with 'Leo' serving as the first communication act under that new partnership. Rather than commission a conventional advertising shoot, Herezie built the film from material already captured by Leo's family on a real cruise aboard the Costa Toscana, the cruise line's flagship vessel. Nothing in the footage was staged, scripted, or directed for camera, a deliberate creative decision designed to prove the brand's promise through evidence rather than assertion.
The campaign launched its first activation in Italy, timed to coincide with the 2022 Sanremo Festival, where the Costa Toscana itself served as a floating stage at sea, as documented by travelnostop.com and shots.net. In France, the campaign was published simultaneously, positioning Costa in the French leisure and travel market with a creative approach that departed sharply from the polished, aspirational visual language conventional across the cruise category. The central idea, described by Herezie's team as 'not filming anything,' placed the emotional truth of a Costa holiday ahead of any produced spectacle, allowing a child's genuine reluctance to disembark to carry the entire argument for the brand.
Costa faced a structurally difficult market in 2022. The cruise industry was in a recovery and normalization phase following the COVID-19 shutdowns that had halted ocean travel for much of 2020 and 2021, a context documented by travelpulse.com. European consumers returning to leisure travel were more skeptical of polished advertising promises than before the pandemic, having experienced cancellations, uncertainty, and a general erosion of trust in travel brand communications.
Europe represents approximately twenty-five percent of global cruise market revenue, according to Grand View Research, making it the second-largest regional market behind North America and a strategically critical territory for any cruise operator seeking scale. Costa, as a European-headquartered cruise line, operates in a competitive environment anchored by Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Group, which together have historically represented a dominant share of global cruise capacity, according to Finance Yahoo. Within that landscape, Costa needed a differentiated creative posture, not simply better production values, but a fundamentally different relationship to proof and authenticity.
Herezie's strategic answer, as reported by marketingdirecto.com and adobomagazine.com, was to treat real guest experience as the only credible advertising currency available to the brand in this moment. Senior strategic planner Claudia Gravagna and general manager of Herezie Milano Alessandro Venturelli contributed to the strategic architecture that positioned the campaign around emotional evidence rather than category convention. In France, where the campaign was formally published, leisure and travel brands were competing for consumer attention in a category flooded with visually identical imagery of blue water and smiling families. 'Leo' cut against that pattern entirely, replacing the category's visual grammar with a child's tantrum on a gangway, an image so specific and unguarded that it functioned as testimony rather than advertisement.
The executive creative directors on 'Leo' were Etienne Renaux and Paul Marty at Herezie, with creative team members Joris Bourquin and Hugo Doré, and Bourquin serving additionally as art director, as documented by shots.net and adobomagazine.com. Production was handled by EXChanges VFX, with the film constructed entirely in the edit suite from smartphone footage rather than on a conventional production set. Herezie CEO Andrea Stillacci oversaw the agency's overall direction on the project, as reported by marketingdirecto.com.
The governing creative principle was absence. By choosing not to commission a single frame of professional footage, the team forced the film's entire emotional argument to rest on material that existed before any advertising brief was written. The smartphone footage, shot casually by Leo's family during a real Costa Toscana cruise, carried the grain, the shakiness, and the unself-conscious framing that professional production systematically removes. That texture became the campaign's primary creative asset, functioning as visual proof that the brand's new signature, 'Costa. Believe your eyes,' was an instruction rather than a slogan.
The edit, constructed by the production team at EXChanges VFX, had to perform a disciplined act of curation. From what was presumably hours of family holiday footage, the creative team extracted a coherent emotional narrative: joy aboard the ship, and then Leo's unmistakable refusal to leave it. The campaign's connection to the 2022 Sanremo Festival in Italy gave the launch a high-visibility cultural context, with the Costa Toscana physically present at the festival as a stage on the sea, as noted by travelnostop.com. In France, the film ran across online and offline channels, extending the activation into the French leisure market with a campaign that the brand indicated would be followed by further acts of communication throughout 2022, according to clapboard.com.
No independently verified third-party performance data for the 'Leo' campaign, such as brand-lift metrics, media reach figures, or conversion results, is publicly available at the time of writing. The campaign's documented view count on the Costa YouTube channel stood at just over one thousand views for the forty-five-second English-language version, as recorded by clapboard.com, which reflects the film's status as a content activation rather than a mass-media broadcast buy.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness argument rests on the integrity of its central creative device. A film composed entirely of real smartphone footage, featuring an unscripted child, carries an authenticity premium that produced advertising cannot replicate. The decision to align the campaign's first activation with the 2022 Sanremo Festival in Italy gave 'Leo' a culturally resonant launch moment, connecting the Costa Toscana's physical presence at one of Europe's most-watched music events with the campaign's emotional content. In France, where the campaign was formally published, the creative approach represented a clear strategic departure from category norms at a moment when European leisure travel was regaining momentum after the pandemic's disruption, as travelpulse.com reported on the industry's recovery context.
Francesco Muglia, Costa's global marketing executive based in France, stated that Herezie impressed the company through its strategic vision during the international pitch process, as reported by marketingdirecto.com. That endorsement from the client's senior marketing leadership signals confidence in the long-term platform rather than a single-film outcome. Clapboard rates 'Leo' at 59 out of 100, reflecting the campaign's genuine creative ambition and its disciplined execution of an unconventional idea, tempered by the limited evidence of measurable market impact available in the public record.
Costa's 'Leo' is a film campaign created by Herezie, published in France in February 2022. It features a three-year-old child refusing to leave a Costa Toscana cruise at the end of his holiday. Built entirely from real smartphone footage shot by Leo's family, it introduced the brand signature 'Costa. Believe your eyes,' as documented by marketingdirecto.com.
Costa and Herezie chose real smartphone footage to prove the brand's promise through authentic evidence rather than staged spectacle. The creative team's governing principle was to 'not film anything,' letting genuine family holiday moments carry the campaign's emotional argument and directly support the new signature 'Costa. Believe your eyes,' as reported by clapboard.com and shots.net.
The Costa Toscana served as a floating stage at the 2022 Sanremo Festival in Italy. Costa used this high-visibility cultural moment as the first activation for the 'Leo' campaign, as documented by travelnostop.com. The festival connection gave the campaign's launch a broad European audience and reinforced Costa's positioning as a provider of extraordinary leisure experiences.
Executive creative directors Etienne Renaux and Paul Marty led the creative work at Herezie, supported by art director Joris Bourquin and creative team member Hugo Doré, as documented by shots.net and adobomagazine.com. Herezie CEO Andrea Stillacci oversaw the agency's direction, and production was handled by EXChanges VFX, which assembled the final film from existing family smartphone footage.
Clapboard rates Costa's 'Leo' campaign at 59 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's genuine creative ambition in using real smartphone footage and an unscripted child to launch a new European brand platform, balanced against the limited publicly available evidence of measurable market performance following the campaign's February 2022 launch in France.
Conventional cruise advertising relies on polished, produced imagery of ships, destinations, and idealised guests. Costa's 'Leo' replaced that visual grammar entirely with unedited smartphone footage of a real child's emotional response to a Costa Toscana holiday. No footage was staged. This approach directly addressed post-pandemic consumer skepticism in the European leisure travel market by substituting proof for aspiration.
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