It was a pleasure for me to be a speaker at the Future of Luxury Marketing Forum focused on bridging traditional luxury marketing with emerging digital trends in the yachting industry.
The online forum was held on June 17th and was hosted by Andrea Tagliaferro, Yacht Femme’s Founder, with speakers representing yacht industry professionals, marketing experts, and luxury brand specialists.
Session 1: Economy Landscape: Let’s Talk $$$
Explored the current economic landscape and financial considerations for luxury marketing, such as the creator economy, monetisation strategies and the shift where we’re seeing influencers partnering with brands.
Moderator: Sophie Spicknell from SuperYacht Times
Speakers:
Victoria Chalaya | NautiStyles & NautiGuys
Marina Jarniat | Crusoe
Betsy Lemaire | CEG Agency
Brands are partnering with influencers in the luxury and yachting space
Session 2: AI Tools: CGI and Beyond for Yachting
Dived into AI tools, CGI technology, and advanced digital marketing applications. The session’s aims were to talk about tools that can help yacht marketing, and understanding challenges with integrating AI into their marketing strategies.
Moderator: Jill Bobrow | Jill Bobrow Associates LLC
Speakers:
Sacha | Northrop & Johnson
Chiara Sassoli | Linking Forward
Session 3: Brand Heat: How Brands Build and Maintain Momentum in the Yachting Sector
Examined how luxury brands build and maintain market share in competitive environments with a focus on sustainable brand development and maintaining relevance in luxury markets.
Moderator: Miryam Fossati | Premier Cellars
Speakers:
Alexandra Llewellyn | Alexandra Llewellyn
Daniela D’errico | Technogym
Kelly Downey | Shamin Abas
Session 4: Mistakes & Tips: Mistakes Marketers Make in the Yachting Industry with Today’s Consumers
The forum discussed common mistakes marketers make in the yachting industry
Identified evolving consumer expectations and how to avoid common marketing pitfalls in the yachting sector.
Moderator: Sidney Bitter-Larkin | IYC
Speakers:
Rebecca Whitlocke | Antibes Yachting
Nadia Warshavskaya | Spinnaker Bureau
Sophia Wilson | Sekoya Communications
While I didn’t get to speak in-depth during Session 4 due to time limitations, here are my prepared answers where I shared real-life case studies and actionable tips to help yachting companies with marketing strategies.
Rebecca Whitlocke from Antibes Yachting shared an example of a marketing campaign that backfired at a yacht show due to poor audience understanding.
“Two years ago, a yachting company launched at a boat show and the company founders had some sponsored PR so they were already building their brand leading up to the show. However, the founders were firm that they did not want any user-generated content (UGC) shared on their social media.
I really pushed back and tried to tell them that there would be journalists, photographers and other industry coming onto their boat and creating videos, taking photos and tagging them. No – 100% confirmed again that they didn’t want anything shared from other pages onto their social media accounts. After two days, one of the founders pulled me aside and said, “You’re right, I’ve seen posts being tagged and shared by other brands on social media – so let’s share content on our pages.”
In the meantime, they’d lost over 40 pieces of great UGC – including videos made by a journalist at Forbes and top yachting media – because they were so fixated on their own branding that they were clueless how people act at boat shows.
The main lessons are:
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- Marketing specialists do this every day and brands need to trust their staff and freelancers to make smart decisions about brand growth and visibility.
- Monitor and track your brand mentions online whether that’s on social media, websites, blogs, or forums. Some tools even monitor podcasts and review sites. There are free tools and paid tools – a few examples are Google Alerts and Talkwalker Alerts. Follow your own hashtag if you have one – you might be surprised who is mentioning and tagging your company online. One global marina group does not monitor review sites and they have 100+ terrible reviews on Tripadvisor for a specific marina…..
- Have a dedicated social media person during boat shows, so they can react in real time and also monitor and push out live updates.
Rebecca Whitlocke from Antibes Yachting shared some actionable tips how smaller businesses can effectively meet consumer expectations with limited resources.
“Set a budget and timeframes. Even if you’re a start-up or a small business you can still plan marketing, PR and advertising campaigns.
Do your research about social media ads, paid PR for different budgets and event partnerships.
Yachting is highly seasonal, so there’s often a flurry of activity leading up to boat shows or pre-season refits. Bear that in mind that media will be snowed under with press announcements, especially just prior to major yacht shows.
Timing and consistency with your campaign is important. Setting a budget and timeframes will help with breaking campaigns into manageable steps and helping you plan, review and adjust your goals.”
Even if you’re a start-up or a small business in yachting, you can still plan and set budgets and timeframes for your marketing campaigns
Rebecca Whitlocke from Antibes Yachting talked about the importance of authenticity and personalisation in marketing.
“In yachting, we have this obsession with perfectly polished content but the best way to keep things authentic is to create live content for example Instagram Live, Stories on the go etc.
If you can’t incorporate live content – and the less scripted the better – then make sure you only put out content that reflects your values, your point of view and who you are. You want to get attention through genuine emotion and intention, not clickbait.”
Rebecca Whitlocke from Antibes Yachting highlighted red flags that marketers should watch for during the campaign planning process, and how affective decision-making can help to avoid critical missteps with luxury marketing campaigns.
“I’ve seen a lot of brands prioritise aesthetics over relevance. It doesn’t matter how beautiful or on trend your campaign looks, the audience for charter brokers versus shipyards have different needs and decision-making, so you need to tailor your messaging for that audience using data and feedback as a guideline for your campaigns.
Use specialists! Copywriting, SEO, Facebook ads – there’s nothing that holds a campaign up longer than approval by committee because there’s 8 people who need to give input to write a press release, or sign off logo placement for a flyer.
Marketing specialists bring deep expertise in areas like digital advertising, SEO, social media campaigns, and consumer psychology that most yachting business owners don’t have time to master. They understand which tactics work for different industries and can avoid costly trial-and-error approaches. Using specialists allows you to focus on running your day-to-day business while keeping on track with your marketing efforts because they’re professionally managed, measured, and continuously adjusted without pulling you away from other critical tasks.”
3 Final Marketing & Communication Tips from Antibes Yachting
- Keep learning. Whether you’re up skilling with AI prompts or learning how to use Canva for basic graphic design, keep learning and improving your knowledge of marketing and communication trends, tools and strategies.
- Pre-plan PR so you can meet media deadlines and maximise attention before, during and post campaign.
- Network with media. Building strong relationships with journalists, bloggers, and media outlets is important. A single well-placed article, feature story, or mention can reach thousands of potential customers, providing credibility and exposure for your yachting company.
Watch the full ‘Future of Luxury Marketing’ forum here:
Sources:
Tune in to the Spotify podcast about the Luxury Marketing Forum featuring Rebecca Whitlocke of Antibes Yachting: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/yacht-femme/episodes/55–Luxury-Marketing-Forum–Mistakes–Tips-Dangerous-Mistakes-Marketers-Make-with-Todays-Consumers-e34co7o/a-ac0l2t8
