The Ask

Project Overview:
A nomination-based contest launched by Norwegian Cruise Line to acknowledge and reward “everyday heroes” who go above and beyond in their respective states and provinces across the U.S. and Canada. The campaign was launched on September 18 and concluded on October 18, 2019 prior to the launch of the new ship. To celebrate the debut of their latest innovative ship, Norwegian Encore brought hometown heroes to the forefront.

In-market:
September 18, 2019 – October 18, 2019

Objectives:
- Increase media attention to the debut of their latest Cruise ship, Norwegian Encore in the U.S.
- Reward “everyday heroes” across the U.S and Canada

Target:
Hometown heroes, those who deserve an encore.

Deliverables:
Contest Design, copywriting, development and scalable hosting
Data moderation (Submissions)
Winner verification (multi-phase)
Non-disclosure
Judging (See judging document)
Reporting (daily)
Support (Inquiries)

The Reward

Contest Prizing
The prizing included 64 cruise certificates valid for 2 people on a 3, 4 or 5 day Norwegian Cruise Line cruise of the winner’s choice.



Norwegian Encore Award Ceremony
In addition to the cruise certificates, the top-voted everyday heroes from each state and province were invited to the Norwegian Encore Award Ceremony on December 13, 2019 in New York City. Norwegian Cruise Line will be covering flights and hotel accommodations for each winner and a guest.

The Architechture

The platform allowed visitors to nominate or vote for someone they knew or themselves.

To Nominate:
To submit a nomination, visitors could click “Nominate”, complete a form on the microsite with details of the person they are nominating, their picture and a 500 word reason for nominating along with details about nominator.

After completing the form, the entrant or the nominator could review their entry in the gallery and share it on social to gather votes or nominate another person.

To Vote:
The visitor/voter could click “Cast Your Vote” and register to vote by logging in with Facebook. This process captured name, email, browser, country, device, date stamp & IP address. *Email is not captured where a person is registered on Facebook using their phone number.

Visitors could search for entrants in the public gallery using first name, last name, or state/province of the nominated person using the search functionality.

The Flow

1. Landing Page

2. Nomination Form

3. Gallery

4. Voting

4. Sharing

The Results

The Encore Moments campaign was a success, with 1,107 entrants, 37,314 votes and an amazing 121,611 visits and 282,973 pageviews.

121,611 visits to microsite
37,314 votes cast
5,308 social shares
1,107 everyday heroes nominated
64 everyday heroes get a cruise

USA Nominations: 1,067 Accepted

USA Votes: 31,360

Canada Nominations: 40 Accepted

Canada Votes: 5,954

The Marketing

The team at NCL leveraged all market facets, press releases, radio, TV, email, social, video, as well as partner and associate marketing and support. The launch activities were both relevant and timely in their management.

Andy Stuart, President and CEO of NCL, provided key messaging through several interviews. "We believe it is very important to make the time to celebrate and thank the people whose acts of kindness and compassion make a difference in the lives of their friends, families and communities. We are very proud and excited to launch Encore Moments and we encourage the public to bring these hometown heroes to the forefront for a well-deserved encore."

Andy Stuart, President & CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, talks about the Encore Moments Campaign.

The Attention

This particular contest had a certain level of virality and was picked up by local news channels and radio stations.


WDEL JetSet reported about Amanda Valentin being nominated in the Norwegian Encore Moments contest.

NBC TMJ4 Andy Stuart, President & CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, talks about the Encore Moments Campaign.

CBS KUTV Andy Stuart, President & CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, talks about the Encore Moments Campaign.

The Analytics

We use Google Analytics to provide deep analysis into users that visited the contest website.

USA - Lifetime Statistics

Canada - Lifetime Statistics

USA - Lifetime Traffic Overview

Canada - Lifetime Traffic Overview

USA - Lifetime Top Social Referreals

Canada - Lifetime Top Social Referreals

The Observations

The Norwegian Cruise Line Encore Moments campaign was a success, with 1,107 entrants, 37,314 votes and 121,611 visits and 282,973 pageviews between US and Canadian activity.

The program launched September 18, 2019 and managed to hold onto both entrants and voters’ attention for 4 consecutive weeks.

Google Analytics confirmed that there were 121,611 users with 158,129 sessions and 282,973 pageviews combined.

The program received over hundreds of entries in the first three days confirming that the launch activities were both relevant and timely in their management.

Users came from almost every major city: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, California, Massachusetts, Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Illinois.

The program gathered over 1,110 submissions and their accompanying nominator and nominee email addresses, while the voting process gathered over 37,000 email addresses as well. Both lists can be leveraged for future marketing opportunities.