Escape To The Great Life
Launching a private island with a fully integrated campaign
Three national TV spots transformed everyday moments into irresistible invitations. The spots reframed ordinary, relatable life situations through the lens of escape.
National TV and CTV
We placed a functional escape hatch on what seemed to be a typical sidewalk construction zone, and surprised New Yorkers with a fully immersive island in the middle of the city. Complete with a tiki bar, lounge chairs, hair braiding, tin drums, four tons of beach sand, and 250 feet of immersive LED screens. All you had to do was open the door, to escape to the great life.
A Hidden Island Activation in SoHo
Literal escape hatches popped up in different cities, helping drive a national sweepstakes that gave away hundreds of actual escapes to Norwegian Cruise Lines newly reimagined private island, Great Stirrup Cay.
Escape Hatch Sweepstakes
We partnered with influencers across the country for a full influencer rollout, from online to IRL at the activation, fueling the excitement and driving awareness of the island experience.
Influencer Escapes
We also covered NYC and Miami in Escape hatches with QR codes that gave people the chance to win an escape to the island.
250+ Wildposting Escape Hatch Doors
We took the campaign to feeds everywhere, interrupting people’s doom scroll to remind them that they could use an escape.
Doomscroll Social Escapes
Hard-working out of home placements made the island’s amenities the hero and invited the audience to truly experience the Great Life, paying off the escape and showing the island.
Out of Home Reinforced the Escape
The island wasn’t built yet. Literally. But we knew we needed to pay off the escape with visuals that truly paid off our idea. So, we created a complete, immersive, lifelike island rendered with high-definition CGI, using only the construction plans.
Island Rendering
The cruise industry is a highly competitive, copycat category. For the launch of its reimagined private island, Great Stirrup Cay, Norwegian Cruise Line needed to break through the noise and stand apart from competitors already offering island experiences.
The Situation
Life is a lot these days. We’re on overload. People are more stressed by their daily routines than ever. People need to get away from it all, and science has proven that a vacation is actually good for your health. But far too often, we put off experiencing the feelings of escape and just push through.
The Insight
We took an audience-first approach, positioning the island as the answer to the escape people crave in everyday life, reminding them not to ignore the voice telling them it’s time for a vacation.
The Unlock
Our idea was simple: invite the world to Escape to the Great Life. Built around the universal desire to break free from the everyday, the campaign positioned Great Stirrup Cay as a symbol of freedom, adventure, and fun.
The Idea
We brought the idea to life through a 360 launch across every channel, from national TV, social and influencer, to OOH, audio, and an attention-grabbing hidden island activation in New York…all in 8 weeks.
The Execution
In the first month, Escape to the Great Life generated over one billion impressions, 1.8 million organic views on day one, and a 7000% surge in web traffic that briefly disabled Norwegian’s booking site and put Great Stirrup Cay on the map.
The Results
Meeting Escape
The campaign set out to dramatize the tension between everyday life and the escape people crave, positioning Great Stirrup Cay as the emotional release valve. We transported our audience to a familiar place, like a boring meeting, full of reports, insufferable bosses, and suck ups, and turned it into a reflection of our inner desires, shifting the dialogue to only names of Great Stirrup Cay amenities, as if the moment itself is calling for you to escape to the island.
Ticket Escape
We wanted the moment to feel real and lived in. Real people in a real situation. The story was unlocked by the situation. Everybody knows that feeling of getting pulled over by a road-ruling cop, and everyone knows how that conversation goes. This allowed us to take over the dialogue and push an attention-grabbing storyline with a surreal ending, while keeping the audience with us every step of the way. We paired the story with characters and performances that reflected our audience, not a tailored version of the brand, to drive connection.
Dinner Escape
Meeting the boyfriend. Tensions are high, the conversation is awkward, and the need to escape is ever present. We connected to our audience through the situation, but we kept their attention through the execution of it. We whipped around the table, showing all the classic archetypes sitting together, from the embarrassing father figure and frustrated daughter, to the annoying little brother. The contrast between routine and reward was sharp, cinematic, and emotionally resonant, using humor, pacing, and visual storytelling to make the escape feel instantaneous.
The Hidden Island Escape
We launched with a disruptive activation in the middle of New York City: an escape hatch tucked into a SoHo sidewalk that opened into a fully immersive hidden island experience.
By placing a real, functional hatch inside what appeared to be a typical construction zone, we surprised New Yorkers bold enough to open the door and step into an unexpected oasis beneath the city streets. Complete with a tiki bar, lounge chairs, hair braiding, steel drums, four tons of beach sand, and 250 feet of LED screens, the underground island delivered the feeling of a true tropical escape in the middle of Manhattan.
The experience quickly captured attention from New Yorkers and beyond, earning an exclusive feature on Good Morning America and making headlines across the country.
Escape Hatch Kiosks
To expand the experience beyond SoHo, we installed 12 branded “escape hatch” doors across New York and Miami. Designed to look as if they were pulled straight from the campaign films, each door opened to reveal a kiosk where people could sign up to win their own escape.
Because every unit had its own power supply and WiFi connection, the doors required no wiring and could appear almost anywhere. Left in place for five days, they created surreal moments of discovery throughout the urban landscape.
Social Escape
The campaign was amplified on social with scroll-interrupting content designed to mimic everyday posts before breaking the pattern and reminding people it was time to escape to the great life.
Influencers across the country created their own escape-themed content, while several were brought directly to the hidden island experience to share it with their audiences, driving engagement and expanding the campaign’s reach.
Wildposting Escapes
To bring the feeling of escape to even more corners of the city, we turned to wild postings. Their raw, high-impact format naturally stands out in busy urban environments and helped extend the campaign’s presence beyond the activation itself.
More than 250 decals featuring the escape hatch and a scannable QR code were placed throughout New York, allowing passersby to instantly enter the sweepstakes and continue the escape story wherever they encountered it.
Escape OOH
Hard-working national placements made the island’s amenities the hero and a New York contextual OOH takeover launched alongside the hidden island activation and escape hatch kiosks, grounding the full launch in the island’s offerings, not just the sweepstakes. The campaign’s out of home served to invite everyone across the country to escape to the great life wherever they were.
Rendering the Island to Life
In a category where every brand claims their island is the best, we knew we needed to truly show what ours felt like.
Using only architectural plans while construction was still underway, we created a fully realized CGI rendering of Great Stirrup Cay. The life-like visuals allowed audiences to explore the island before it was finished and became a central visual system used throughout the campaign.
