Stratetron

Scrapblog Powering Carnival Cruise Scrapbooks

Jordan Corredera — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:01:22 +0000

Mashable covers:

Scrapblog Powering Carnival Cruise Scrapbooks

Stephanie Leavitt: Social Media Strategist is interviewed by networlding

Jordan Corredera — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:05:18 +0000

Carnival’s very own Stephanie Leavitt, Social Media Strategist to the stars, is interviewed by social networking blog Networlding.

Check it out here:

http://networlding.typepad.com/networlding/2008/04/social-networki.html

Congratulations, Steph!

The Webby Awards

Jordan Corredera — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:45:34 +0000

A big Congratulations to the Carnival Cruise Lines interactive team and Avenue A|Razor Fish teams for the fantastic distinction of Official Honoree at the Webby Awards for Funshipisland.com !

The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to work that scores in the top 15% of all work entered into the Webby Awards. With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and over 60 countries, this is an outstanding accomplishment our teams.

Congratulations!

The first marketing comic strip in a “series” made on Bitstrips.com

Jordan Corredera — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:10:46 +0000

Marketing a comic strip by jordan.corredera.

Found this great site while at SXSW called bitstirips.com. It allows you to create your own comic strips, characters etc. Below you’ll find my first effort with the tool. For a moment, I imagined that this would be the first in a long and very funny series… Don’t hold your breath, I’m what they call ”enthusiastic” or what my father used to call “fantazma productions”. Enjoy.

South by Southwest 2008 – Highlights and pictures.

Jordan Corredera — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:58:55 +0000

What do you mean?!? What’s the deal with twitter!? I thought we covered this? Fine, @mywitsend jumping in front of a bus.

Fellow Miami native Alex Cavalo and I – He has no idea who I am. (Alex was there to seal the ScrapBlog/Carnival Deal with me in ’07)

Walter Anasagasti, Thomas Ainslie and I – Representing the Carnival Cruise Lines contingent at SXSW ’08.

Too artsy for my taste…

Master Chief and I.

Robert Scoble and I — Learn about it…

Shel Isreal and I — Learn, learn about it…(2 cause he’s older)

What do you mean The Flip only has one button? I don’t get it…

The End…

Carnival Senior Cruise Directer John Heald’s blog mentioned in USA Today article

Jordan Corredera — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:28:25 +0000

Carnival’s very own blogging phenom John Heald was mentioned in a USA Today piece on corporate blogging last Friday. The article also mentions a few other corporate blogs in the travel space like the TSA, Southwest Airlines and Mariott. Southewest Air and Mariott seem to be the stand bys when it comes to travel and blogging, nice they included CCL in the bunch. Check out the article here.

Mad Money’s – Cramer calls Carnival Corp a protected stock

Jordan Corredera — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:25:27 +0000

Unfortunetly, I only have a handfull CCL stock, because Mad Money’s Jim Cramer called Carnival Corporation a buy. He followed up with calling CCL a “protected stock”. Sounds good to me, check it out here. http://www.cnbc.com/id/23592455

AdSoak » Blog Archive » Funship Island

Jordan Corredera — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 01:19:12 +0000

Quick article I found on Carnival’s Funship island web site.

AdSoak » Blog Archive » Funship Island

Carnival Cruise Lines online marketing – a look back at 2007

Jordan Corredera — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:46:05 +0000

As we say good bye to another wonderful year, I thought I would take a moment to look back and go through a few of Carnival’s online initiatives in 2007. We launched quite a few sites. Here are some of the highlights:

Fun Ship Island – Millions of visitors can’t be wrong! If you have never been on a Carnival Cruise or want to be reminded of the fun you had, hands down this is the place to check out first. Funshipisland.com is as close as you can get to a Carnival Cruise without packing your bags. Just a heads up though, an experience as realistic as fun ship island has slightly longer page load times, but believe me the high definition Fun is well worth the wait. Explore every nook and cranny and you can find many freebies like: relaxing MP3′s for your iPod; a beautiful beach screen saver with live weather from the Caribbean; a Carnival ring tone you can customize to your liking; a “Fun Ship” Freddy Iron-on for the kids; and so much more. (Check it out and let us know what you think)

Carnival Connections 2.0 – Connections is the hub for all things community at Carnival. You can plan a group cruise and add photos and videos to your posts and profiles. With the addition of the Carnival Channel, all of the our blogs can be easily found in one organized area here, But there’s so much more- check it out.

Speaking of blogs we’ve launched quite a few this year:

John Heald’s Blog – Life onboard a Carnival Cruise Ship by Carnival’s Senior Cruise Director. John’s blog is always entertaining and gives a real behind the scenes look at life aboard a Carnival Cruise ship. Join the millions of visitors on John Heald’s fantastic blog here.

The Carnival Channel Blog – Get to know the driving force behind Carnival’s award winning cruise vacations. On the Carnival Cannel you’ll find lots of great video interviews from the folks that put the “Fun” in Carnival’s “Fun Ships”.

Splendid Things in Life – Here you’ll find lots of great guest generated content as Carnival passengers tell it like it is right after taking a fabulous Carnival Cruise. You could be the next guest blogger. Click here to find out more.

News from Carnival Cruise Lines Blog – With 22 ships (soon to be more) in the Carnival Cruise Lines fleet, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the latest cruising news. That’s why we launched the news blog! Read about the latest updates to our ships, itineraries, onboard activities and more or find out what other bloggers and online publications have to say about your favorite cruise line.

As far as Micro-Sites 2007 kept us busy.

Carnival Splendor Micro-Site – Web pages dedicated to the upcoming Carnival Splendor.

Carnival Freedom Micro-Site – Web pages dedicated to our newest Funship the Carnival Freedom.

“Evolutions of Fun” Micro-Site – Web pages dedicated to our amazing Multi-million dollar Fantasy class refurbishment Program.

You know Carnival has always been social and as you can expect we were all over the social networks in 2007…

Twitter – A cross between blogging and instant messaging, check out our Twitter account for short updates on the latest happenings at Carnival Cruise Lines.

YouTube – Lots of great Carnival video content, including crew interviews, tours of the ships, peeks at what our shore side employees are up to, and much more!

Flickr – Browse our collection of fantastic photos. From ship and destination images to photos taken by Senior Cruise Director John Heald, you’re sure to feel like you’re back onboard.

Facebook Fan Page – Facebook users can now become “official” fans of the Fun Ships by adding our Fan Page! Post a message in the forum thread, watch a video, or check out our photos.

“I love Carnival Cruise Lines” Facebook Group – Another great way for Facebook users to stay connected with Carnival and other Fun Ship fans.

And that’s only the half of it. Just wait till you see what we have in store for you in 2008! There are lots of surprises coming so, stay tuned!

From all of us here at Carnival, have a wonderful New Year!

Let’s start with the home page.

Jordan Corredera — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:34:42 +0000

The interactive marketing team at Carnival has been focused on redesigning carnival.com for some time now. Just to be clear, we realize that there are more than a few areas of opportunity across the site. The good news is that we’re absolutely dedicated to being the best on the web for all of our customers and partners. Now being the best is a lofty goal for sure, but the team here at Carnival is committed to making that happen across all areas of the company. For now I will start with one of the most important parts of our site the home page.

There are many different types of visitors on our home page with many different goals. So, we do not take this redesign lightly. The team started by defining the goals for the next version of the site and assess how to best meet the many masters we serve on carnival.com. In future posts I will delve deeper into the various stakeholders and their effect on our overall site design. For now lets focus on a few key reasons people visit the home page:

1. Research a Carnival cruise vacation

2. Purchase a Carnival cruise vacation

3. Manage a Carnival cruise they have already booked

With this in mind we realized that no redesign could be successful without getting feedback directly from the millions of visitors we serve. That said, we asked all of the creative folks and developers to stop the presses immediately before we went too far. We wanted this feedback program to be meaningful. So, we felt we needed to get the community involved as early in the process as possible. With that said I present to you our current redesigns and ask that you give us your true feedback good or bad so that when we do replace the current version of carnival.com it will be the best Carnival site for and designed by you – our guests. Below you will find an early mock up of our new home page design. Expect many more posts on all sections of the site. Additionally, this blog will be a great place to watch as we respond to your suggestions and implement them as fast as we can. We have set up a forum on Carnival Connections specifically for this redesign here. By the way, we have code named the next version of carnival.com “HD” (story on the name, coming soon). To comment specifically on the new home page image below go here.

Click the image for a full scale version.

Additionally, please let us know if you like the idea of taking part in our redesign effort and just leave some comments on the blog.

Thanks again for participating. We are excited to hear your feedback.

You say tomato, I say to-mahto – Web Site Category Labels

Jordan Corredera — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 00:39:36 +0000

I think some folks would be surprised to find out how much thought goes into picking the various category names for the links on Carnival’s web site. There are lots of reasons we spend time on choosing the right category labels. We take into account branding and clarity amongst many other factors. The most important factor though, is what a word means to our site visitors. In some cases the Marketing team is too close to the product to choose a clear winner on these items. That said, the team has been going back and forth on what to call a few items on our site. So, instead of discussing the issue any further we will leave it up to you.

Below are some of the items we need feedback on. The changes will appear on the header of the next version of carnival.com. Here’s an example of the proposed header: (click the image to view in full scale)

Category 1: “Find-A-Cruise” vs. “Cruise Search” | Vote Here
-The Find-a-Cruise link will take you to our main cruise search application and allow you to easily narrow your results. This is the best place to find all of the cruise options, details and pricing. So help us decide between “Find-A-Cruise” and “Cruise Search” by Voting here. If you have a better suggestion leave it as a comment on this post or in any of the forums related to this topic.

Category 2: “Fun Ashore” vs. “Shore Excursions” | Vote Here
-The Fun Ashore link will take you to our shore excursions page. It allows you to explore our expansive library of shore excursions and will give you details for each one including level of effort and price range. So help us decide between “Fun Ashore” and “Shore Excursions” by Voting here. If you have a better suggestion leave it as a comment on this post or in any of the forums related to this topic.

Category 3: “Onboard Fun” vs. “Onboard Experience” | Vote Here
-The Onboard Fun link will take you to a page dedicated to all of the great things you can do onboard a Carnival Cruise from Dining and Spa treatments to Youth Programs and Daytime Activities. So help us decide between “Onboard Fun” and “Onboard Experience” by Voting here. If you have a better suggestion leave it as a comment on this post or in any of the forums related to this topic.

If you want to know more about web site category names check out this article (it’s one of my favorites on the topic). The article is by Jared M. Spool of User Interface Engineering. He is known in the industry as a thought leader on the topic of user interface; I really respect his work.

Anyway, hope you can help us out, we look forward to hearing your feedback.

Video – Carnival’s Marketing VP – Tries WaterWorks for the 1st Time

Jordan Corredera — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 02:49:19 +0000

A few months ago we unveiled our brand new WaterWorks feature as part of Carnival’s “Evolutions of Fun” program. The response we’ve received from our guests has been fantastic. But you know, the team here at Carnival HQ get’s just as excited to take a trip down the brand new Twister water slide as our guests do. Here is a video of my boss Christine Arnholt (Vice President of Marketing) taking her first trip down the slide on the Carnival Imagination. Looks like a blast, can’t wait for my turn!

Cheers,

Jordan

We need your help creating the next carnival.com!

Jordan Corredera — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 00:37:41 +0000

The main purpose of many web sites is to help people collect information on a particular company, service, person, place, thing, etc. The Carnival Cruise Lines web site, carnival.com, does just that: it lives to make researching, buying and deciding on a cruise vacation easy and fun. With that said, we realize that in order for the site to fulfill its purpose we need to fully understand our guests’ needs. So, we’re launching a new program that depends on your feedback. We are working on some big enhancements to carnival.com, but before we go any further we need to know what you think–yes, what you really think (constructive criticism included). We’re looking for feedback on everything from the font color to the technology and functionality of certain features. If something doesn’t work for you, if you don’t like the new layout, or if you think it’s the greatest thing under the sun let us know!

Here’s how it works… Each section of the site will have its own forum thread. The main post will include images and links of a specific site section (i.e. “FunShips”, “Onboard Fun”, “Fun Ashore”, etc.). Read the post, check out any specific instructions. Then give us your review. You can create a new thread or simply reply to a previously created thread. Once you’ve submitted your feedback feel free to check back as often as you like or sign up for the RSS feed for this blog. This way you can find out what everyone else has to say and you’ll see changes we made based on your recommendations. We have quite a few sections to review, so we’ll be releasing a few at a time. We invite you to comment on as many sections and post as much feedback as you like. So, go ahead and voice your opinion on the new carnival.com, created for and by you. Expect a post shortly with all the links you need to help us kick off this exciting program.

Thank you for your valuable feedback in advance.

Helped someone on LinkedIn – Twitter

Jordan Corredera — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:47:57 +0000

A bit ago I answered a question on LinkedIn it went like this:

“Are you using Twitter? Do you know what it is? Have you found any personal or business value to using the service?”

I answered and thought nothing of it. I then found a post on just this question in my Google alerts for “Jordan Corredera”. (BTW if you don’t have a Google alert on your own name get one now, its easy and o’ so useful)

Here was the post called Findings and Follow up on Twitter:

“I only got 7 answers this time. This might be because there were already 28 or more questions asked about Twitter or that the percentage of Twitter users on LinkedIn is quite low overall, most probably a bit of both.

6 out of the 7 respondents were using Twitter.
They were using it for a mix of business and personal contacts.
Sharing interests and information about what they are doing.
Micro-blogging. Publishing their ‘tweets’ to friends on facebook and/or to their blog visitors.

A few had on and off relationships. Using it for a while and then leaving it for a long time.
Having good ideas, but not always the time or opportunity to tweet.
Following too many people can lead to overload and too much information.

I have included an excerpt of a good business focused response from Jordan Corredera of Carnival Cruise Lines, with a few good hints:

“We added twitter into our overall social messaging strategy in May of 2007. We have found micro-blogging to be effective as a part of our overall social marketing strategy. Twitter takes very little effort/cost to take part and the benefits, while difficult to truly quantify are clear. Many guests want to hear what we are up to on a regular basis @carnivalcruise, it is my responsibility as a marketer to provide these communications and deliver them in a way our customers want. Whether you use blogs, videos, podcasts, twitter or any other tools the easier you make it for customers to tune in to your brand the better off you are.

Lesson Learned: We initially used twitter as another medium to push news and marketing items, we found that the community demanded more interaction. Our solution was to make sure that we would answer back when pinged on twitter and when posting a news type item we posted the story first on our blogs and linked to the post enabling comments and feedback. Twitter will not be the last tool we add to our mix and we will always try to stay vigilant about experimentation and knowing how our customers want content delivered.”“

This was posted on Dont Confuse Us – A Digital Marketing Resource by Paul Madden

How would you design the pool deck of a Carnival Cruise ship?

Jordan Corredera — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:16:07 +0000

Carnival Cruise Lines is spending millions to refresh it’s “fantasy class” ships from flat screens in the rooms to re-designing all of the public areas. I recently visited the Carnival Fascination which has already received the “extreme make-over” and it looked really great. One of my favorite new features of the ‘Evolutions of Fun” program is the new Pool (Lido) Deck designs. These will be introduced soon on starting with the Carnival Imagination and should be across the fleet late 2009. Below is an image of the current set up:

And these are a few renderings of some of the changes planned for the Decks on the “fantasy” class ships.

I would love to hear any comments or suggestions.

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