Groupe Beneteau: Nine Brands, One Strategic Direction - How Communications Are Managed

Inside the Brand: Stefano Grasselli’s Perspective continues with this second article in PressMare’s series exploring communication, marketing and brand management strategies in the marine industry. Guiding readers through this journey is Stefano Grasselli, an executive with over thirty years of experience managing internationally recognised brands, currently Vice President Brands & Communication - Boat Division at Groupe Beneteau.

Having introduced the principles governing brand value and positioning, Grasselli now turns his attention to the workings of a multi-brand organisation, examining the French group from within. His position provides a privileged perspective on how to develop a communication strategy capable of reconciling brand identity, commercial performance and the specific characteristics of different markets.

Qui foto Grasselli già in archivio puntata 1 - Didascalia: Stefano Grasselli, Vice President Brands & Communication - Boat Division at Groupe Beneteau, author of the “Inside the Brand» column on PressMare

Articolo di Grasselli

At Groupe Beneteau, communications have a seat at the decision-making table. The Chief Brands and Communications Officer holds a C-suite position - part of the group’s senior executive leadership - and sits on the Executive Committee. This organisational structure reflects the belief that building and managing brand identity creates as much value as industrial efficiency or financial strength. The scope is that of a group employing more than 7,000 people, with nine international brands and a commercial presence spanning over 1,000 points of sale worldwide.

Who Does What

The Chief Brands and Communications Officer oversees brand communications targeting end consumers, dealers, business partners and boating enthusiasts. At an operational level, each brand has its own dedicated team, working closely with the group’s VP Brands & Communications and the General Manager of its respective Business Unit. These teams are responsible for planning and executing campaigns, content strategies, social media activities, participation in events and boat shows, and all operational marketing activities associated with the lifecycle of the products in their ranges.

Brand Building and Performance: Two Approaches, Two Sets of Metrics

Contemporary marketing faces a challenging balancing act between brand communications and performance marketing. The former aims to build identity, reputation and perceived value over the long term. The latter seeks qualified contacts, prospects and leads - potential buyers who have provided their contact details - in the short and medium term, through drive-to-store activities designed to bring customers into dealerships and through commercial activation. At Groupe Beneteau, this distinction is particularly significant because it operates within a multi-brand structure that must manage brands with very different market positions, diverse audiences and varying levels of market maturity across geographical regions.

Brand communications, or brand building in industry terminology, strengthen each brand’s identity in the minds of its target consumers over time. This involves high-profile image campaigns, collaborations with internationally renowned designers and naval architects, sponsorship of sporting and cultural events linked to sailing and boating, editorial coverage in specialist and mainstream media, and consistent storytelling around core values: passion, audacity, a pioneering spirit and the transmission of knowledge and traditions.

Each brand interprets these values in its own way. For Prestige, it means conveying accessible luxury, refined interiors and the craftsmanship of the Monfalcone shipyard. For Lagoon, it means absolute freedom, life on board and the discovery of unspoilt destinations aboard a spacious, stable catamaran. For Beneteau, it means the group’s long history, French sailing heritage and technological innovation serving every type of boater.

Performance marketing focuses on measurable short-term results: qualified traffic to brand websites, collecting potential buyers’ contact details, appointments with dealers, visits to exhibitions and boat shows, sea trial campaigns and sailing experiences offered to customers. The tools are those of digital marketing:

• SEA (Search Engine Advertising), paid advertising on search engines;
• Conversion-oriented social media campaigns, designed to encourage users to take a specific action, such as requesting further information;
• Email marketing;
• Retargeting, which displays advertising to users who have previously visited a brand’s website;
• Programmatic advertising, the automated purchasing of online advertising space.

These are complemented by offline initiatives such as dealership events, dealer-organised sea trials and direct mailing campaigns targeting databases of qualified prospects.

In recent years, the group has developed significant expertise in this area, based on a fundamental observation: even when purchasing a high-value yacht, the customer journey increasingly begins through digital channels during the research and evaluation stages. Before entering a dealership, buyers have typically visited the brand’s website, watched presentation videos on YouTube, explored forums and enthusiast communities, and read reviews in specialist online publications. The group must therefore maintain a relevant presence at each of these touchpoints, providing quality content, appropriate messages and effective calls to action that guide potential customers through the purchasing process and towards their local dealer.

The most delicate challenge is preventing performance marketing from undermining brand value. An aggressive promotional offer or a poorly executed digital campaign may generate leads in the short term while significantly damaging brand perception over the medium and long term. For this reason, the group has established precise guidelines through its Brand Books, internal manuals defining each brand’s visual identity, tone of voice, key messages and creative quality standards, which must be respected regardless of the communication channel or objective.

Corporate and Product Communications: Two Perspectives, One Continuum

The second distinction concerns the target audience. Corporate communications are institutional in nature and address a broad range of stakeholders, including investors, employees, institutions and the media. Product communications, by contrast, focus on the characteristics, benefits and emotional appeal of individual yachts and boats within the range.

Corporate communications revolve around three main themes. The first is environmental sustainability: the group communicates its commitments and progress in reducing environmental impact, from the use of innovative materials such as Arkema’s 100% recyclable Elium resin to the development of hybrid and electric propulsion solutions. These messages are conveyed through the newsroom - the website section containing news and press releases - as well as press releases, annual sustainability reports and dedicated investor platforms.

The second theme is governance and financial stability. Listed on Euronext Paris, the group is subject to specific transparency obligations towards investors and financial markets. Quarterly results, analyst conferences, annual reports and communications concerning decisions taken by the Supervisory Board, the oversight body, and the Management Board, the executive body, form a regular and rigorous flow of information managed jointly by the Communications and Finance Departments.

The third theme is cultural identity: a history that began in 1884 as a small craft-based business in the Vendée region of France and developed into a position of global leadership in recreational boating. The values of passion, audacity, pioneering spirit and the transmission of knowledge and traditions have provided continuity throughout more than 140 years and continue to guide strategic decisions.

Product communications operate over a shorter timeframe and pursue more specific objectives: introducing a new model, explaining innovations across a product range, highlighting the benefits of a particular configuration and communicating the experience of being at sea. They primarily target enthusiasts and potential buyers, using different channels and approaches: specialist boating magazines, individual brand websites, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, launch events, and international boat shows such as Paris, Genoa, boot Düsseldorf and the Cannes Yachting Festival.

However, the boundary between these two areas is permeable. Product innovations, such as hybrid propulsion or sustainable composites, become corporate communication topics when they form part of the sustainability strategy. Stories of sailors and boat owners fulfilling their dreams aboard a Beneteau, Jeanneau or Lagoon become part of the institutional narrative when they illustrate the group’s mission, “Bringing Dreams to Water”. Consistency between these two levels is one of the factors underpinning the strength of Groupe Beneteau as a corporate brand.

Centralised Direction, Brand Autonomy

Every multi-brand group must reconcile two requirements: centralising certain functions to ensure consistency, efficiency and quality control, while allowing brands and markets sufficient autonomy to respond quickly to local characteristics. Groupe Beneteau addresses this tension through what might be described as a federated communications model: strong central leadership over strategy, identity and standards, combined with considerable operational autonomy at brand and market level.

The central organisation defines the overall strategy, the values to be communicated, minimum quality standards, visual identity and tone-of-voice guidelines for each brand, and investment priorities across brands and markets. This approach is essential to preserving and enhancing the value of the portfolio as a whole, while maximising synergies in creative resources, shared digital platforms and participation in events.

Individual brand teams, meanwhile, enjoy considerable freedom in planning and executing campaigns, selecting channels and messages, and managing relationships with specialist media. This autonomy is essential to maintaining distinctiveness and authenticity: a Prestige campaign must differ in tone, aesthetics and the values it evokes from an Excess or Wellcraft campaign, even though all must comply with the same quality standards.

Geographically, regional subsidiaries, such as those in North America and Hong Kong for Asia-Pacific, adapt communication and marketing strategies to local conditions. This involves culturally relevant messages, selecting the channels most widely used in each market, and coordinating drive-to-store activities with the dealer network.

United States and Hong Kong: Two Strategic Outposts

The two subsidiaries operate according to very different geographical, cultural and market dynamics, yet both are strategically important.

The North American subsidiary operates in one of the world’s most important and competitive boating markets, the largest globally for dayboating - recreational day trips typically involving smaller motorboats - and powerboating, with a boating culture deeply rooted in local traditions. Here, the subsidiary adapts global strategies to American market characteristics and coordinates drive-to-store activities, connecting digital campaigns - including Google advertisements, Facebook and Instagram advertising through Meta Advertising, and programmatically purchased display banners - with dealers’ offline initiatives, such as regional boat shows, sea trial days and dealership events.

The US market also provides a particularly valuable testing ground for digital innovations in marine marketing. Online boat configurators, which allow customers to personalise their vessels on screen, virtual yacht tours, financing simulators and onboard connectivity services all find a particularly receptive and technologically sophisticated audience.

Hong Kong, meanwhile, serves as the coordination hub for the entire Asia-Pacific region, operating within a radically different cultural and market environment. Asia is currently among the regions with the greatest growth potential for luxury and premium boating, driven by the expansion of upper-middle-income groups in China, Southeast Asia and Australia. The subsidiary coordinates communications and marketing across an exceptionally large and diverse region, from Japan to Australia, China to New Zealand, and Malaysia to the United Arab Emirates.

Its role in adapting global messages to local markets is crucial. The dominant digital channels differ from those used in Europe and North America - WeChat and Weibo in China, LINE in Japan, Kakao in South Korea, alongside local messaging and social media platforms - requiring content strategies and local expertise that only a direct presence in the region can provide.

The aesthetic preferences of Asian buyers are reflected in product configurations developed specifically for these markets. Launch events and dealer presentations follow precise cultural protocols, where respect for hierarchy and attention to ceremonial detail are as important as the quality of the product being presented. Working with local dealers, the subsidiary develops effective, culturally appropriate drive-to-store initiatives. Among these, sea trial days are particularly influential, transforming a potential buyer’s initial interest into an emotional experience that is difficult to forget.

An Ever-Evolving Balance

Brand building and performance, central leadership and individual brands, corporate and product communications, global messages and local adaptations: none of these balances can be considered permanently achieved. Groupe Beneteau’s model continues to evolve because markets, technologies and consumer behaviour are constantly changing.

The ability to adapt, combined with the strength of its founding values and brand identities, is what has enabled a group established in 1884 to become a global reference point in recreational boating.

Stefano Grasselli