Carnival Cruise Lines… I got your “carnival” right here!

Seems Carnival Cruise Lines and its $70+ million account are up for review. 13 shops threw their hat in the ring for the first round by answering the RFP. Carnival’s consultancy reviewer of choice — Ark Advisors out of NYC — has whittled it down to 7.

“…identified the shops as Havas units Arnold in Boston and Euro RSCG in New York; MDC Partners’ Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners in New York; Interpublic Group’s DraftFCB in Chicago and McCann Erickson and Deutsch, both in New York; and Omnicom Group’s BBDO in New York.

Client executives will visit the shops in mid-April before selecting a handful of finalists. Carnival, whose major media spending ranges between $70 million and $80 million annually, hopes to conclude its review by the end of May.”

Well that is all fine & dandy — but 7 shops still after the initial round? Couldn’t you stick with maybe 3 or 4 — tops… 7 seems a tad excessive — especially when you are choosing multiple shops from one holding company (ed note: McCann & Draft survive the first cuts– I think SuperSpy & G. Parker just shit themselves with those selections.)

Of course, it provides the opportunity for the client to take trips to multiple places to “check out the shops and their capabilities.” And those are always straight-laced, all-business trips (*cough* Julie Roehm & Howard Draft at Nobu in Chicago during the Wal-mart review – Effen-Effen anyone? *cough*)

Reminds me of the time I was working for a city municipal client and we took them to the city where most of the project work was being done — and they got off the plane and insisted we head to all the finer gentleman’s clubs in the city — and “Oh yeah… (ODL) — you mind paying for it all? Because of course you can expense it all back to the City and there is a minimal paper trail involved.”

Good times!

Is this Gary Hart’s Boat by chance?