World Cruising Club

Who: Organisers of sailing events worldwide. worldcruising.com

Why: With the brand under new ownership and still suffering the lag of covid, the requirement was to generate more well-prepared event entries.

How: To raise awareness, I harnessed the power of the primary event’s 1,000 participants on social media, creating engaging dialogue that achieved 9.1 million views on Facebook and Instagram (Nov 2024-Feb 2025), increasing reach by 450% and engagement by 147% Linktr-ee. Working closely with yachting journalists delivered over 140 pages in print and another 20 million social media views in that period.

I expanded the shoreside events programme, reaching into Scandinavia, Netherlands and USA to deliver a mix of seminars and ‘meet the sailor’ activities to inspire and educate potential participants, establishing the organisation as thought leaders.

The tagline ‘Your adventure starts here’ was coupled with ‘It’s your adventure, supported by us’ to focus on pre-event support for participants, many of whom were relatively new to sailing. These twin themes of adventure and support were used across communications and shoreside events.

Pre-event newsletters were swapped from quarterly pdfs to monthly themed emails, backed by a range of fact sheets, explainer videos and use of social media and WhatsApp groups to help prepare participants.

Existing collateral hadn’t been updated for 10 years, so I tweaked the look and feel, making the logos more consistent across the six sailing events and updated printed material to look fresher and legible for non-English speakers. I delivered a new website in September 2025, and managed the build of a new digital event management platform.

With 1,600 participants every year comes and element of risk, and I used my crisis comms experience to focus the owners on improving crisis management, something that was tested following a fatality in 2024. During the incident I handled international media calls, family liaison and prepared internal and external statements.

What: Positive feedback from both enquirers and participants, a return to pre-covid levels of enquiries and event entries, demand from yachting and lifestyle journalists worldwide to cover future events.

Reduction in low quality inbound phone and email traffic as customers accessed improved pre-event information, enabling the office team to focus on higher value-added enquiries.

Dean & Reddyhoff

Who: Group of five leisure marinas on the south coast. deanreddyhoff.co.uk (archived site)

Why: Private equity owners were keen improve results by attracting and retaining customers, providing additional services and acquiring more sites.

How: In a market driven by price and dominated by blue, I created clear differentiation by focusing on customer service and friendliness and switching the dominant colour to green. The subtext was ‘more fun, less faff’.

A fun, approachable brand using a bold logo, hand drawn illustrations and a direct writing style was rolled out into all customer touch points, from signage and staff uniforms to the website and loyalty cards.

To bring the brand to life, pop-up events and random acts of kindness helped to make the marinas destinations, rather than simply boat parks. Marketing activities were underpinned by service delivery that focused on customer needs and being straightforward and open.

What: Enquiries tripled, the database grew by 10,000 and customer churn declined. Turnover reached £8m and another marina chain were seamlessly rolled into the group, which was subsequently named boatfolk (bought by Premier Marinas in September 2025).

Harbour Assist

Who: Developers of a SaaS management system for harbours and marinas. harbourassist.com

Why: Challenger software keen to develop the product and grow into new export markets, with the ultimate aim of selling out.

How: I started by interviewing existing software users worldwide to understand what they valued about the product and their future plans and challenges. The interviews were distilled into a set of development priorities for the software team, and case studies with direct quotes from the interviewees to share with potential customers.

Switching the sales focus from features to benefits and using real examples from existing customers helped differentiate the product. A new website with a clear brand identity and voice, supported by editorial in trade publications, articles on LinkedIn and a monthly newsletter provided tools for the new sales teams in the UK, USA and Australia.

What: The increased visibility and clear proposition delivered the opportunity to sit down with the biggest marina companies in the world, led to increased sales in North America, Australia and Europe and ultimately to the successful sale of the business.