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Norwegian Cruise Line Says Caribbean Missteps Will Weigh on 2026
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Good morning. Debating the company’s course is one thing. Sailing without your colleagues is another.
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Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters
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Norwegian Cruise Lines reported lower profit in the latest quarter and said recent missteps would hurt net yields in the current one.
What went wrong? Bureaucracy, according to executives.
In its eagerness to bring guests to Great Stirrup Cay, a private island where the company is expanding its offerings, Norwegian ramped up deployment to the Caribbean before some new amenities were ready, new CEO John Chidsey said on an earnings call with analysts yesterday.
“The culture was very siloed with the lack of a one-team mentality, which fed into this lack of cohesion,” said Chidsey, who had been a board member before taking over as chief executive last month.
“Marketing was going in one direction,” Chidsey added. “...The island was going in a different direction.”
That not only hurt the period ending Jan. 31 but the new quarter, CFO Mark Kempa said on the call:
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“As we stepped back and evaluated our 2026 deployment, it became clear that our commercial strategy, including our sales, marketing, pricing strategy, and revenue management tools, were not aligned with our deployment. As a result, certain itineraries did not receive the coordinated commercial support required to maximize performance and yields, which was weighing on our expected performance for the full year.”
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The broad strokes will be familiar to many executives, not least to marketers, even if it’s not usually discussed quite so extensively in public.
Now it’s time for company leaders to row in the same direction. Chidsey set a new North Star: “Going forward, our decisions will be driven with a focus on revenue management, which we'll work with in direct sales and marketing to better align our resources.”
Norwegian will also fix what Chidsey called underinvestment in “technology, revenue management capabilities, and customer-facing systems.”
Marketers elsewhere may want to bookmark the Journal’s earnings story, in case they need a cautionary tale for their own colleagues.
Still active: Elliott Investment Management said Norwegian’s commentary “reinforced a troubling pattern of execution lapses and strategic missteps across the business that have been years in the making.”
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Content from our sponsor: Deloitte
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KitKat Marketing Leader: ‘Consistency Doesn’t Have to Be Static’
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KitKat’s latest global campaign and a new partnership with F1 are helping the brand reach new audiences and capture consumers’ attention in a competitive category. Read More
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday night tried to quiet the backlash for striking a quick deal with the Pentagon after rival Anthropic said it couldn’t “in good conscience” give the military what it wanted.
Altman said OpenAI had amended its agreement with the government to explicitly prohibit using its tech to surveil Americans, or any use by the National Security Agency.
He also said he regretted going after a deal for OpenAI while Anthropic was still in its highly charged dispute.
A quick recap: The Defense Department was demanding the right to use Anthropic’s AI in all lawful cases, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was insisting on guardrails around mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons, and Altman said he wanted to “help de-escalate things.” The Trump administration ultimately ordered federal agencies not to use Anthropic. And hours later, OpenAI announced a Pentagon pact that seemed to reflect the same carve-outs Anthropic had wanted.
The events cast Anthropic as “the good guys” for some, as The Wall Street Journal’s Heather Somerville reports.
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Its Claude chatbot hit No. 1 in downloads on the Apple App Store, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT for the first time.
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Some of the company’s AI apps briefly crashed on Monday because of what it called “unprecedented demand.”
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And fans used sidewalk chalk outside Anthropic offices to leave thank-yous and praise like “You are patriots.” Outside OpenAI’s office they suggested to employees, “Maybe it’s time to quit?”
Here’s Altman on X last night:
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“One thing I think we did wrong: we shouldn’t have rushed to get this out on Friday. The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”
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$1 billion
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Injection into Pinterest by activist investor Elliott Investment Management for the company to repurchase shares. Pinterest in January said it would cut up to about 15% of its workforce and reallocate resources toward areas such as AI to help users find and purchase products in the images they pin. Elliott called itself a steadfast supporter of the company.
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The community where marketing leaders drop the corporate speak and share what’s actually happening. The WSJ CMO Council unites leaders from the world’s most influential brands including Adobe, Audi, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Taco Bell, P&G and Verizon.
Tap into the connections and WSJ intelligence that move careers forward and separate the prepared from the scrambling.
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Haley Bergsgaard/Habelo
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Skincare brands devoted to hands are growing as consumers try to avoid signs of aging anywhere. [WSJ]
Paramount CEO David Ellison confirmed that he plans to merge HBO Max and Paramount+ after completing the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, but said “HBO should stay HBO.” [Deadline]
Ad tech firm Criteo struck a deal with OpenAI to sell ads to appear in ChatGPT. [Adweek]
Target reported another sluggish quarter of sales Tuesday, its 13th consecutive quarter of weak or falling sales. [WSJ]
Williams-Sonoma marketing executive Abby Teisch was promoted to CMO. [Chain Store Age]
Steak ’n Shake parent Biglari said the chain’s same-store sales last year rose 10.2% after starting to cook its fries in beef tallow, selling cane-sugar Coke and taking payment in Bitcoin. Several locations will now test a “retro-futuristic aesthetic” featuring Tesla charging stations. [Restaurant Business]
Was that Big Arch burger-tasting video by McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski “damaging” or “unremarkable”? Discuss. [Ad Age]
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