From today, luxury cruise line Cunard will make its first cinema appearance with a new advert. The advert, named ‘Dreams’, will appear in every UK cinema before every screening of the new Downton Abbey movie.
Created by Cunard’s retained agency Alpha Century, the advert draws on the emotions evoked when travelling on an Iconic Transatlantic Crossing with the world’s only ocean liner, Queen Mary 2. The 40-second advert features Alan Watts, a British philosopher, writer and speaker and invites the audience to “dream of love, banquets, wonderful journeys and music beyond all belief” and then, once they have done that, forget that they were ever dreaming.
“In a world where we often find it hard to switch off, a holiday on board a Cunard ship is the perfect place to escape the everyday. This advert captures what it feels like to experience the magic of a Cunard voyage on board our flagship Queen Mary 2 as she journeys across the Atlantic,” said David Milo Jones, Marketing Director of Cunard.
Cunard’s retained media buying agency Wavemaker chose Downton Abbey as the platform to release the new advert as they wanted to provide Cunard with the perfect combination of reach, impact and context.
“We know that many of our target audience of discerning travellers are passionate Downton Abbey fans, so a return to the big screen was too good an opportunity for us to miss,” added Jones.
The Cunard campaign also includes branded content produced by Alpha Century. This content will run across all of Cunard’s social media channels and be distributed to Cunard’s international teams to use in their own sales and marketing channels.
Alpha Century’s Executive Creative Director, Barney Girling, said, “Until you’ve sailed on board Cunard you can’t quite appreciate the atmosphere they have created, through over a century of careful fine-tuning. Alan Watts’ distinctive speech about finding oneself within an infinite dream, perfectly captured the sheer magic and scale of what Cunard now offers their guests.”
