Carnival Cruise Line puts a twist on Groundhog Day with a Facebook Live event

Facebook Live campaigns are not only a very engaging way to connect to your audiences; they also allow brands to create very original concepts.

One of the recent projects we worked on with Wildlife and their client Carnival Cruise Lines did just that, with their ‘Ask Bill the Mystical Sloth’ campaign. 

Designed as a parody to Punxsutawney Phil of cult-film Groundhog Day fame, the world’s largest cruise line enlisted a sloth named Bill to forecast summer’s duration live on their Facebook page, to mark the summer solstice.

Before the stream went live, the countdown feature built momentum and anticipation as viewers were urged to comment on the video to get predictions from a “mythical” sloth for a chance to win a $1,000 gift card.

The stream also included a host of other interactive fan engagement features, such as custom graphics, comments to air and scrolling calls to action, which helped generate 1.4 million views, 26k comments, 12k reactions and 1.6k shares on the video.

It’s still remains a mystery how, but during this special live broadcast; Bill announced that there will be an extra 17 days of summer this year. In addition to this forecast, the mystical creature with psychic powers also “hung around” and made on-site predictions for viewers from a waterside location in the Florida Keys.

To end the cruise line’s summer solstice celebration, and to honor of Bill’s talent for prognostication, Carnival made a $10,000 donation to the Discover the Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica, a featured excursion for several of the line’s ships.