Introducing Armada Club: the members-only club with a mission to bring new people to the industry without even having to move the yacht from its port.
Digital marketer Claire Hagen discusses the new project, her thoughts on the industry's evolution, and why it’s going to take more than a still shot of a boat to create an effective campaign.
If you don’t know her by name, you have more than likely come across her work. Claire Hagen is the creative force and ultimate storyteller behind the yachting world’s funnest campaigns, created for the most prestigious brokerage houses and shipyards the industry has to offer. The secret behind her strategy? Her ability to infuse any campaign with emotional resonance.
Now, the award-winning digital marketer is promising to make use of the fleet of yachts lying there in port or at anchor, without even having to move them.
Below, Hagen discusses Armada Club, the members-only space offering dining and wellness on yachts at port or anchor. Meanwhile, she also muses about the state of yacht marketing today and how we must navigate the sector’s future.
Elsewhere on the news front, the Dubai Boat Show, in its new April slot, is starting to take shape, with Yachting Ventures bringing back the Start Up following its successful launch last year. Egypt’s Il Monte Galala development announced plans for a 150-berth marina, and AD Ports Group posted record revenues for the year.
All the best,
Faisal
Faisal@maritimeobserver.com
Most boats are sitting idle for months on end, and Claire Hagen is doing something about it: Inside Armada Club’s mission to bring new people to the industry.
In September 2023, a campaign by brokerage house Edmiston for the “not only on the water” campaign left its audience bewildered.
It was a shot of Port Hercule, populated with all the superyachts in attendance for the Monaco Yacht Show, in line with typical coverage for the event, but what was unusual was a hot air balloon, in the brand’s signature moody red, roaming the sky. Confusion abounded. Was it real?
It was not - the balloon was doctored into the scenery using CGI - but the campaign was effective in its out-of-the-box thinking. So much so that some attending the event thought they had missed it. With Claire Hagen, that was the point: to make the audience think twice.
The award-winning digital marketer, never afraid to colour outside the lines, is behind some of the industry’s most captivating ideas and is now using her marketing bent to court individuals who have the means to enter yachting but have never gotten around to it. In other words, she’s venturing into the unutilized space in yachting between owner and charter use, as a founding member of Armada Club: a private membership affair offering onboard dining and wellness on yachts in port or at anchor.
The reality is that most owners spend only 10-20% of the year onboard their vessels, and Armada Club promises to be the antidote to idleness with a concept never seen before in the industry. The formula is unique: sharing a similar strain to startup prodigies Uber and Airbnb - share a car, rent your house, operating with a whiff of Soho House, and sprinkling in some charter operations, the project exists in a rarefied space combining yachting, technology, and private members clubs.
And before understanding just how Hagen is approaching this ambitious undertaking, there is a journey that has shaped her digital nativeness and marketing expertise, leading her to this moment.
“It’s human psychology” - Creating a difference in marketing
The itch to get into marketing was instilled in Hagen in her formative years. Her early accolades include a first-place prize in the UK for creative strategy and a second-place finish in a competition amongst European creatives. Hagen marinated in old school marketing bibles, which she believes still resonate today. “You need seven reasons why we should buy this product. If you just take that philosophy to what you’re doing, and if that’s how you run your marketing campaign, then you’re already better than 90% of the market because there are very few bands that think like that.”
She first cut her teeth in the hospitality industry, eventually working with a roster of brands including publishing powerhouse Penguin Books and hotel-chain Hyatt. Her time working with hotels and restaurants proved to be a masterclass in the value of real-time feedback. “The fastest way to become a better marketer is real-life results where you really have to have an outcome. And I think that’s what hotels really did for me. You can have a theory about something, but actually, when in reality no one turns up to that event, and no one booked that hotel [you say], “oh okay, that didn’t work.”
The yachting industry first alighted upon Hagen when she joined BOAT International, before moving to brokerage house Fraser. Her time with the company writ large the problems with cookie-cutter targeting strategies. “A lot of the time, we make assumptions that these long videos are good for charter, but actually the video really has to add an emotional level on top of it. It can’t just be the same thing as the photos,” she says. “How many people watch the hotel promo[tion] when they go on holiday? They just wanna see what the rooms look like and where the resort is, which is kind of the same mentality.”
Once she made the leap to starting her own agency in This is Odyssey, success followed in short order. Hagen has created campaigns for the biggest shipyards and brokerage houses in the business. Her work showcasing vessels bestowed a new veneer of creativity, intended to be thought-provoking, as the hot-air balloon idea illustrated. “It’s showing the same thing but in a different way and making people think twice in this fast-paced world, especially with yachts, because it’s already impressive, right?”
But when it comes to her observations on yacht marketing, the troubles marketers in the sector face run deeper than the way yachts are showcased.
Wider Industry Challenges
In the age of artificial intelligence threatening to take over creative and social roles, Hagen believes “Creativity is most important. More than ever. The only thing we have left is being human. We need to bring back why people buy a yacht, it’s because they want the privacy of being with their family and loved ones. That emotional safety. How we sell that is really important now.”
Ultimately, Hagen believes the issues stem from budgetary constraints. “Most marketing departments are under-resourced”, she says, adding that there is more to the game than shooting a video. “Marketing in yachting is boring in some ways if you’re going to do it properly. It’s a tough job to sit there and look at retention times and the real fine details of what’s working and what’s not.” Hagen also believes this data does not cater to current owners who still hold much of the spending power and are likely to remain in that position.
That current UNHWIs in their 60s and 70s are experiencing longer lifespans is best read as an indicator that shifting to target younger prospective owners, whom she feels spend less time on their phones, can be a misguided idea. “There’s a neglect of the current owners. We should also be thinking about how we market to the people now, not just trying to get the younger generation.”
So, with social media engagement declining and younger generations taking an anti-tech stance, what does the future of yacht marketing look like? “We need to be more personalised,” she says, citing the example of sending promotional packages by post. “Shipyards will become more like clubs,” a strategy adopted by brands of the wider luxury industry. “We have to bring the product to the people and not just wait for them to turn up to the boat show.”
In Hagen’s estimation, this new era of marketing may see a wave of consolation to the industry. “Collaboration is key because it’s gonna take a lot of money to do these offline events and be more personalised, so maybe you’ll see more mergers in the market of brokerage houses.”
Therefore, armed with the wisdom of how to navigate the future of the sector, Armada Club promises to give personalisation a whole new meaning.
“The iTunes to the Yachting Industry” - Armada Club
Private members’ clubs are booming. According to real estate consultancy Knight Frank, more of these spaces have launched since 2021 than in the previous three decades combined. And the sector is expected to grow by 11% annually, reaching $25.8 billion by 2027. The market is a large prize to share, and now, the yachting world is about to experience it.
In Armada Club, Spanish for a fleet of yachts, Hagen sees the concept as a way to bring in a new class of owners into the yachting sphere. Think of it as a 4D marketing tool. “There needs to be a better way to get people into yachting,” she explains, likening the idea to a philosophy employed by supercar brands Porsche and Rolls-Royce. “They give you the keys to the car, and they just hope you come back. Because they know the experience of driving a Porsche cannot be sold in an ad you watch.”
And with an entry fee of € 140,000, Armada will hand its patrons the keys to a fleet of yachts ranging from 30 to 100 meters in length, followed by a €70,000 yearly rate. To arrive at this price point, Hagen kept a scrupulous account of what membership clubs are charging, smartening herself on the habits of different demographics in the process. This is justified by the Asian market, which holds significant spending power in the private membership space. “By their culture, they don’t show off wealth, so going to a club and paying 150k per year is normal to them, because then everyone in the club has paid the same amount.”
In addition, Admission to the club will be subject to stringent standards. “It’s giving the right access to the right people with pre-vetted KYC (Know Your Client), so that people have the trust in the membership.”
Yet monetary gain is far from the main driver behind Armada. “It’s about actually solving a problem and creating the right philosophy that we should have in yachting,” Hagen says, “There needs to be more community incentives in yachting.” To back this declaration, revenue from all onboard dining and wellness will be pocketed by the owner and broker. Hagen also plans to give away 20% of the commission to two charitable causes: one dedicated to crew welfare and the other to a foundation for those experiencing heartbreak.
With Hagen’s designs on introducing the venture, she makes it clear that brokers will not be ceding the charter space for Armada, but will actually be beneficiaries, the third raison d’etre for the club. “This is a new category in yachting, not anything that exists currently. It’s actually helping them get leads.”
Just don’t call it fractional ownership. “It’s an asset-light model. We will have access to yachts, but we will not own any yachts. Uber has access to the biggest car fleet in the world, but it doesn’t own any cars,” Hagen says. ”It’s more that we just want the access model of having dinner and a wellness experience. We’re never going to go overnight.”
For Hagen, the goal is to introduce a lower-stakes way for prospective owners to experience yachting, which would otherwise feel too much to take on for first-time charters. “There’s not a lot that can go wrong. With a charter, people can cancel; it’s a very long time to be on a boat, maybe they get sea sickness.”
Current owners can get in on the fun too, taking it as an opportunity to sample other builds. “What is it like to dine on a Feadship over a Lurssen? You can tell the build quality better when it’s in service,” she remarks. “You’re more relaxed than going through a boat show. You can see it in an operational style, which I think will help the industry sell more boats and create more people who want to build.”
Besides the fact, this will at least give the people who have tried everything their city has to offer the chance to mix it up. “Generally, people really want a network of variety. If you live in Monaco and have sort of done the Monaco circuit, it’s having a roster of restaurants in the port that changes every month.”
Emerging yachting destinations will also be included in the mix. One of which is The Red Sea, where Hagen believes local members, whose yachting infrastructure has not yet fully matured, would delight in the concept. “With the way the region is emerging, it is a natural way for people locally to experience yachting without the headache. Because there is a lack of infrastructure, this will make it a lot easier.”
Getting the technology right, one of the pillars of the venture, is an area in which Hagen is not cutting corners. “One of the biggest costs for the Club is going to be cyber security and security in general of people’s data,” she says, borrowing a page from successful tech enterprises when it comes to the application’s hardware. “The technology onboard is an iPad that is exclusively for the club so that you’re not using someone’s phone.”
Armada Club will first blink to life with a pilot scheme launching in March 2026. Rounding out the brain trust behind the project is music producer and founding director Jonny Harris, director of photography Mirka Formanovà, and interior specialist Iliyana Popova. As for Hagen, the immediate outlook on her agenda is to spread the word. “You’re launching something that’s never been done before, so getting people educated in the concept is super important. These next two years are an education to the market about how it works.”
Don’t be surprised if you receive a fortune cookie in place of a business card. Why? “Because people want the art of surprise. I can give you a business card, and it will get lost in your bag.” She says, “Every social media thing, every email that comes from us, every invite has to be experiential.
With all her accolades, Hagen could easily rest on her laurels, barrelling forward with her storytelling dexterity on yachting campaigns, but she’s on a mission to save the world. Or at least make it a better place than when she found it. As to what she would consider a marker of success for the project? “It’s really defining Armada to mean being onboard and that someone actually cared about your experience.”
Visit https://www.armadayachtclub.com for more.
