Oh, the skullduggery of PR!
Students of public relations learn in PR 101 that despite all denials, the lowliest practitioners believe that PR in its highest form still calls for throwing a bone to media hounds when they’re onto something that has corporate dogs hiding their tails beneath their hind legs.
Carnival Cruise Lines, long labeled “the fun ships,” has just assured entry into the “Annals of Oops” with its president’s second reminder announcement that marijuana sniffing dogs are now deployed for random searches of boarding passengers’ luggage to sniff out pot stashed among their layers of bras and panties.
“Random”. Second reminder. Scary, eh? You could be next!
And why at that particular time?
Why wouldn’t this be a disinformation campaign timed to avoid censure about a man overboard who might have been found if Carnival were following the federal Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act of 2010? The act requires passenger vessels operating in the United States to “integrate technology that can be used for capturing images of passengers or detecting passengers who have fallen overboard, to the extent that such technology is available.”
Credit the founder of PR, Edward Bernays, who called such brain befogging “propaganda”, that became the title of his seminal work. Drawing on the insights of his Uncle Sigmund, he empowered business and political leaders with a formula to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it.” PR would appeal not to the rational part of the mind, but the unconscious.
The timing is exquisite
I read about the announcement by Carnival President Christine Duffy in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Duffy for the third time cited federal law that criminalizes the use of pot despite its legalization in many states and growing tolerance in the cruise industry’s favorite ports of call, St. Thomas and St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. There, federal law allows double the amount of duty-free purchases that passengers can buy contrasted with purchases, say, in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic.
Ships themselves are also competing with ports of call by expanding their own duty-free shop goods and frankly by just about every other way they can get passengers to spend beyond their almost all-inclusive lure that Carnival and most other lines use to compete with shore-based vacations. These include wellness centers, premium WiFi, “drink packages,” and theme park rides at private Caribbean and Bahamian islands. Advance
purchase makes them commissionable to travel agents, who all cruise lines rely on for bulking sales.
Consider Duffy channeling her inner Bernays
One unidentified former passenger cited by Duffy in her third announcement said that “the smell of weed was so strong on our balcony, on our last few cruises, that it left me nauseous to set out there.”
Another not identified was said to have complained “We sailed on New Years [sic] Eve, and the smell of pot was everywhere, it was bad. We sailed again in March and the dog was there, and no smell of pot on board.”
Carnival’s ticket contract, similar to other cruise lines’, states that marijuana and other controlled substances are prohibited and may not be brought on board any Carnival ship. Guests agree that Carnival can search their cabins, luggage and personal effects “at all times and without notice” to ensure compliance.
I don’t know whether crew members reap a bounty for snitching on pot-redolent passenger cabins.
But it just so happens that Duffy’s third announcement followed within days of a posting by maritime lawyer Jim Walker whose office has become the bếte noir of the industry for revealing how passengers and crew members have suffered on board ships from shortcutting safety protocols and the flouting of federal law that it doesn’t suit them to enforce.
Walker had made news of the latest “man overboard” incident on board the Carnival Magic. According to Walker, who was informed by a clandestine on board source, the passenger was reported by his companion as missing hours later, a delay too long for any chance of turning the ship around for a search with any chance of success. The Coast Guard did try but failed.
But wait a minute.
Core Bernays, Duffy issued no press release about its lack of compliance with federal law. She sicced no dogs — read FBI — on the captain or the company. The FBI did begin its own brief investigation that so far has led to no prosecution.
Don’t stop the Carnival
Carnival it seems would rather pay its lawyers and PR people to evade compliance than do the right thing. Costs for a shipboard installation start around $200,000 and can run to a million. And it’s true that the chances of falling overboard on a cruise are roughly 1 in 1.4 million.
Further, in this same timeframe, the captain of the Carnival Sunshine chose to run through severe tropical weather instead of taking the extra time and burning the extra fuel that circling around the storm would have required. Result was onboard flooding captured by crew and passengers and made public by Walker, from his sources.
For the cruising public the lesson is that Carnival enforces the laws that suit its obfuscations and ignores laws that don’t. Its deviance governs almost the entire industry when left to its own self-policing.
Shaquille O’Neal is the new face for Carnival’s “fun ships”. They’re emphatically not the “trust me” ships. It’s only Carnival’s passengers, those of other companies and watchdogs that are pushing for compliance with all federal laws. The United Nations World Tourism Organization has said nothing. Nor has the Cruise Line Industry Association or the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association.
When you cruise, you wind up cruising on your own whether or not your mate falls overboard.
NOTES
https://www.cruisehive.com/carnival-cruise-line-gets-strict-with-new-message-for-passengers/94558
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2023/06/03/carnival-embarking-drug-dogs-to-stop-onboard-weed-use/
https://www.cruisehive.com/carnival-cruise-line-gets-serious-with-detection-dogs/103315
https://www.pilotonline.com/2023/06/05/carnival-embarking-drug-dogs-to-stop-onboard-weed-use/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_Cruise_Line
https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/05/30/carnival-sunshine-cruise-flood-storm/
