Princess Cruises launched 'Change' in January 2018, created by Omelet, repositioning the brand around personal transformation rather than ship amenities across
Princess Cruises Bets on Personal Transformation to Sell the Sea
Princess Cruises launched "Change" in January 2018, a campaign created by Los Angeles ad agency Omelet that repositioned the brand around personal transformation rather than ship amenities, reaching United States audiences across broadcast television, digital, and social platforms during the cruise industry's peak booking window.
The campaign arrived as Omelet's first integrated work for Princess Cruises following the agency's appointment as brand agency of record in November 2017, as reported by LBBOnline. That timeline was deliberate. As confirmed by Adweek, the launch was timed to fall between January 8 and 10, 2018, placing it at the opening of what the cruise industry calls wave season — the January through March period that consistently generates the highest volume of cruise bookings across the United States market. The campaign was also engineered to run alongside Princess Cruises' media buy surrounding the Winter Olympics, extending the brand's reach into one of television's most-watched annual events.
Rather than cataloguing onboard features, "Change" built its entire narrative around the "Come Back New" brand positioning. The creative premise held that a Princess Cruises voyage does not simply entertain passengers — it returns them to shore as meaningfully altered people. That philosophical shift from product-led advertising to emotionally resonant storytelling defined the campaign's identity from the outset. In terms of format, the launch package was substantial: one 90-second centerpiece film, two 30-second television spots, and five 15-second films distributed across digital and social channels, as documented by Clapboard. The Clapboard Score for the "Change" campaign is 67 out of 100, reflecting a creatively ambitious execution that navigated a category not historically known for narrative depth.
The cruise industry operates on a sharply seasonal booking rhythm. Wave season — the January to March window — concentrates a disproportionate share of annual bookings, making January campaign launches a commercial necessity rather than a stylistic choice for major operators, as noted by Adweek. Princess Cruises entered that window in 2018 with a campaign designed not to shout louder than competitors but to occupy a different emotional register entirely.
The competitive landscape that "Change" entered was dominated by scale. According to Hope Research Group, Carnival Corporation — Princess Cruises' parent company — held approximately 47.4 percent of the global cruise passenger market in 2018. Royal Caribbean commanded approximately 23.0 percent, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings approximately 9.5 percent, also per Hope Research Group. Within that environment, conventional cruise advertising leaned heavily on visual spectacle: gleaming ships, azure water, and cascading entertainment options. Adweek described the "Change" campaign at launch as a departure from that category convention, noting its pivot toward interior, human-centred storytelling. That positioning aligned Princess Cruises less with direct competitors and more with aspirational travel brands outside the cruise segment, broadening its competitive frame in the United States market.
Carnival Corporation's Winter Olympics sponsorship created an additional strategic layer. By synchronising the "Change" campaign with that media buy, as reported by LBBOnline, Princess Cruises gained access to a mass broadcast audience predisposed to narratives of human achievement and transformation — an audience whose emotional state was already primed for the campaign's core argument. The strategic match between media context and creative message was not incidental; it was structural to the campaign's design.
The "Change" campaign was directed by Arnaud Uyttenhove through Caviar Productions. Uyttenhove brought a character-driven visual sensibility to the work, grounding what could have been an abstract brand argument in observable human detail. The campaign's director of photography was Bjorn Charpentier, whose cinematography gave the 90-second centerpiece film the tonal register of long-form narrative content rather than conventional travel advertising.
Creative direction came from Florian Bodet at Omelet, with Senior Art Director Tiffany Lam and Senior Copywriter Ernesto Campabadal shaping the campaign's specific visual and verbal language. The writing positioned transformation not as a marketing abstraction but as something legible in faces, posture, and behaviour — choices that required the kind of restrained copywriting that trusts the image to carry weight. Chief Content Officer Mike Wallen and Chief Production Officer Dan Ruth oversaw the broader production pipeline, with agency producer Caitlin McBride and executive producer Kim Dellera managing the project through production, and Stephan Mohammad serving as production-side producer at Caviar Productions. Post-production was handled by Whitehouse, whose editorial work shaped the pacing that made the campaign's emotional arc land across both long and short formats.
The decision to build a suite of eight distinct assets — one long-form film, two broadcast spots, and five short-form digital and social films — reflected a media-aware production strategy. Each format served a specific channel context while maintaining a coherent visual and narrative identity. That structural discipline is rarer in campaign production than it appears, and it speaks to the coordination between Omelet's creative and production leadership and the Caviar Productions team. The campaign, as archived on Clapboard, stands as a formal document of a production process designed for simultaneous multi-platform deployment from day one.
No verified performance data for the "Change" campaign is publicly available in terms of brand lift, booking uplift, or audience reach figures specific to the United States rollout. Princess Cruises and Omelet have not released campaign metrics through any named public source, and no third-party research body has published attributed results for this specific creative work.
What can be assessed is structural effectiveness. The campaign launched at the optimal commercial moment — the opening of wave season — with media placement tied to the Winter Olympics, one of the highest-reach broadcast properties available in the United States market. The asset suite was built to sustain presence across the full booking consideration window, with short-form digital and social films extending the campaign's life beyond the initial broadcast push.
The broader market context supports the strategic logic. According to Hope Research Group, the cruise industry carried approximately 27.2 million passengers globally in 2018, with passenger volume growing at approximately 5.6 percent year on year, also per Hope Research Group. Within that expanding market, the United States remained the dominant source of cruise passengers. A campaign that successfully shifted Princess Cruises' brand perception from amenity catalogue to transformation narrative would, in structural terms, have operated as a meaningful differentiator during a period of intensifying capacity competition. As reported by LBBOnline, nine new vessels with approximately 32,000 lower berths entered service industry-wide in 2018, representing an investment of approximately 7.4 billion dollars, meaning supply-side pressure made demand-side brand work more commercially urgent than in quieter market conditions.
"Change" is a 2018 Princess Cruises campaign created by ad agency Omelet. It launched in the United States in January 2018, anchored to the brand's "Come Back New" positioning. The campaign comprised a 90-second film, two television spots, and five short-form digital films distributed across broadcast, digital, social, and display channels.
Omelet created the "Change" campaign for Princess Cruises. The Los Angeles-based agency was appointed Princess Cruises' agency of record in November 2017, as reported by LBBOnline, and "Change" was Omelet's first integrated campaign for the brand, launching in January 2018 during cruise industry wave season in the United States.
Arnaud Uyttenhove directed the "Change" campaign film through Caviar Productions. Director of photography Bjorn Charpentier handled cinematography, while creative direction came from Florian Bodet at Omelet. Post-production was completed by Whitehouse. The full production credits are archived on Clapboard.
Princess Cruises timed the "Change" launch to wave season, the cruise industry's peak booking period running January through March, as noted by Adweek. The campaign also aligned with Carnival Corporation's Winter Olympics media buy, giving Princess Cruises access to a large United States broadcast audience primed for narratives of human achievement.
"Change" moved away from ship-amenity advertising toward personal transformation storytelling, built around the "Come Back New" positioning. Adweek described it at launch as a departure from cruise category conventions. The strategy repositioned Princess Cruises in the United States market as a brand promising meaningful change rather than simply cataloguing onboard features.
The Princess Cruises "Change" campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 67 out of 100. The score reflects an ambitious creative positioning that moved the brand beyond product-led messaging toward emotional narrative, executed across a multi-format asset suite designed for simultaneous broadcast, digital, and social deployment in the United States market.
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