Paris • New York
Zodiac Nautic, bringing 130 years of French boating to America
2026 – Present
How I helped Zodiac turn 130 years of heritage into a growth engine
Zodiac invented the inflatable boat. Everyone who has spent a summer on the water knows the name. But on Instagram, that legacy translated into likes, not leads. A large audience was watching, and the brand had no way to talk to it, let alone sell to it.
In the US, the problem was even bigger: there, Zodiac wasn’t a legend yet. It was a challenger.
Since 2026, I’ve been helping Zodiac change that, as the growth strategist coordinating its partners across Europe and North America.
The challenge
The brand had history. What it lacked was reach where it mattered, and a way to turn attention into customers. Three things stood in the way.
Awareness. In Europe, Zodiac is an icon. In the US, its biggest growth market, it was a challenger, with low awareness and thin social proof.
Competition. The US market is crowded with local brands that spend heavily on Meta, which pushes up the cost of every lead. And a boat is a premium, considered purchase: classic lead gen gets expensive fast.
Content production. For a boat brand, this is a puzzle. So many boats to shoot, so many targets and personas, each in its own setting. Feeding every channel, in every market, with the right boat, in the right environment, for the right person, was out of reach with traditional shoots.
So the question was: how do you build awareness and capture qualified leads without outspending the competition?
The approach
My answer was a full-funnel system: build awareness at the top, convert at the bottom, and feed it all with content at scale.
Create awareness. In each strategic territory, top-of-funnel Meta campaigns and giveaways put Zodiac in front of new audiences and turn attention into owned contacts. Alongside, we partnered with the IMMB agency to run creator events, build the community, seed product and lead press relations.
Convert. Then we focus on the lower funnel: boat shows and sea trials, backed by Zodiac’s dealer network in North America. The system brings in leads at a lower cost and a highly qualified audience, ready for a dealer to close.
Content at scale. All of it runs on AI content. Every boat, in every environment, with every persona, produced fast enough to feed each channel, each market and each stage of the funnel.
The journey
We started in Europe, where Zodiac already had awareness. France and the Netherlands were the testing ground: the place to build the system, prove the mechanics and bring the cost per lead down.
With the model proven, we extended it to the US, where awareness was lowest and the runway largest. The same system, adapted to a new market: awareness first, then boat shows, sea trials and dealers to convert.
The hardest part was never the mechanics. It was getting a media agency, a creative studio, a PR firm and the brand’s own teams to work as one funnel. Once everyone saw the same people move from a giveaway entry to a sea-trial booking, it clicked.
What it built
$0.50 – $1
x3
25%
What I learned
Heritage is only an asset if you put it to work. 130 years of history means little if it just earns likes. Turned into a quiz, a giveaway or a story told one-to-one, it becomes the reason people raise their hand.
And you don’t need the biggest budget to win a crowded market. You need people who already chose you, and a way to reach them in one message.