Countdown to ORIANA - Preparing for a maiden season

With the launch of any new ship the owners marketing deparment works exteremly hard to begin selling the ship to the public even before any of the cruises go on sale, a full advertising campaign to attract existing and new passengers alike to sample the new delights of the new ship.
When the ship is as important as ORIANA the marketing becomes even more so, not only would the ship need to single handedly capture 10 % of the UK market and the less than enviable task of joining CANBERRA as her new fleetmate and taking her place as flagship, CANBERRA's regular passengers had become extremely loyal to her and it would take a lot of clever marketing to convince them to cruise with the new ship.
She also was to take the place of rival Cunard's QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 as the flagship of the British Merchant Navy, P&O certainly had a lot of work to do to introduce ORIANA to the public.
 We are going to look at some of the ways that P&O publicised ORIANA and touch upon how some of her crew prepared for their new charge.
 We start by looking at Countdown to ORIANA, series of 9 magazines which P&O released quaterley from Spring 1993 to Spring 1995

The magazines looked into many aspects of the development of ORIANA from such as designs for public rooms and cabins to looking at those behinds the scenes such as the designers and introducing the officers who would guide ORIANA through her maiden season.
Each magazine focused on an area of design showing various concept drawings of the areas, theses included public rooms and cabins as shown below.

  As seen below to give an insight to the ship the deck plans, which are more or less accurate to the ship as built, were released before names had been assigned to the various venues on board.

 Other topics included covered various updates on the construction of the ship.

In the later issues the magazines also introduced perhaps the most important element to ORIANA's success her crew.

 Introducing Ian Gibb as ORIANA's Master.

  Each magazine was rounded off with questions and letters from the public about ORIANA and general news from P&O along with contact details for registering interest in ORIANA's maiden season.