When I took the position of president for Beneteau America, T2H had already been working with our marketing department, mainly about improving our sales tools. As you can imagine, I took the job with many new ideas, a new staff and some thoughts about reorganizing our marketing strategy, our communications and as it often happens, a clear objective to find a different communications agency. My new marketing team however wanted to process in a rational approach and test T2H with some other possible partners.
Not only did T2H structure the best marketing plan, they also brought some very innovative ideas to the table. The ones that create strong communication, solid brand awareness, and would have great impact for the amount of money we could invest. To name only a few examples: Beneteau launched the new Swift Trawler 34 on a voyage around The Great Loop in order to advertise our new powerboat line in the USA. Twelve months, and over 80 pages of editorial later, our powerboats were launched!
T2H also came up with the idea to dress up the central building of the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show with some huge advertising about the latest Beneteau products. This huge banner allowed us to attract new customers, but even more critical new dealers!
I believe that the greatest challenges of communication and marketing are:
• To make the best impact for the money invested
• To translate into facts the leadership that the brand needs to express
• To balance corporate image with product advertising
This can be achieved only by the communication experts that take the time to understand your positioning, your issues, your environment and build strong messaging that will evolve over the years. It takes those experts to embrace the DNA of your company. This is how Jeff and Kristin became family with Beneteau, and why we trust them so much when we need to generate new ideas for our media plan, product launches, or design a new electronic sales tool.
