This article was based on the interview with Renaud Delaquis, Head of Product Marketing at Coastline Academy by Greg Kihlström, AI Adoption keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
For enterprise marketing leaders, the mandate is clear: grow. But the path to that growth is a landscape of paradoxes. We’re tasked with building a powerful, recognizable national brand while simultaneously forging authentic, personal connections within hundreds of disparate local communities. We must harness the immense power of sophisticated MarTech stacks—AI, automation, and predictive analytics—while also recognizing that sometimes the most effective tactic is sponsoring a high school football team’s new uniforms. This balancing act between digital scale and grassroots authenticity is the defining challenge of modern marketing, demanding a unique blend of strategic vision and tactical dexterity.
This is not a theoretical exercise. It’s the daily reality for leaders at rapidly scaling companies. Take Coastline Academy, a driving school that has expanded its presence to over 2,000 towns and cities across nine states. Their model, operating without the traditional brick-and-mortar footprint, presents a fascinating case study in building a brand from the ground up, market by market. We spoke with Renaud Delacquie, their Head of Product Marketing, to understand how they navigate this complex terrain. His approach reveals a powerful philosophy: a symbiotic relationship between high-tech efficiency and low-tech community engagement, where one fuels the other to create a flywheel of sustainable growth.
The Dichotomy of Digital Scale and Analog Connection
In a world awash with digital marketing channels, it’s tempting to believe that every problem can be solved with a more optimized ad campaign or a smarter algorithm. While these tools are indispensable for reaching audiences at scale, they often lack the texture and trust of genuine community involvement. The most sophisticated marketers understand that a winning strategy isn’t about choosing one over the other, but about creating a portfolio where digital precision and local presence amplify each other. Delacquie’s strategy at Coastline Academy is a masterclass in this dual approach. They leverage sophisticated digital tactics where their local competitors are weakest, while simultaneously doubling down on old-school community building.
“And I really liked this as a digital marketer is we went like a full 180. We’re like, ‘Hey, how can we allocate this marketing budget in a way that will have a real impact on these communities that will market to our audience, which is teenagers or parents of teenagers.’ And the number one tactic that we found is sponsor high school teams, sponsor…give money to schools, support schools, support Boys & Girls Clubs, get involved in charities…And for me as a marketer, that’s like the most rewarding thing is I get to give money to a football team because they need new uniforms instead of just giving it out to Google.”
This is a profound insight for any marketing leader. The impulse to pour more budget into the highest-performing digital channel is strong, but Delacquie reminds us of the diminishing returns and the intangible benefits of reinvesting that budget into the communities you serve. It’s not just philanthropy; it’s astute marketing. Sponsoring a local team places your brand directly in the heart of the community, building goodwill and brand affinity in a way a banner ad never could. The challenge, of course, is making such a “low-tech” approach scalable. Coastline solves this by using high-tech tools—list-building software and automated outreach—to identify and connect with local opportunities, then empowering their local instructors to be the face of the brand within those communities. It’s a hybrid model that marries the efficiency of technology with the irreplaceable impact of human connection.
Fueling Growth Through Operational Efficiency
Entering a new market is an expensive proposition. The customer acquisition cost is at its peak, brand awareness is nil, and profitability is a distant goal. The conventional wisdom is to simply outspend the competition until you reach critical mass. But a more sustainable approach is to become better at spending that money by fundamentally lowering your operational costs. For Delacquie and his team, this means looking inward and leveraging technology not just for customer-facing initiatives, but for radical internal efficiency. By building a leaner, more agile operational engine, they can afford to be patient in new markets and invest in the long-term tactics that build a durable brand.
“And like everybody talks about AI and everything like that. Like we’ve seen the advantage of AI for us. As an example, our engineering team is shockingly small for a company our size. And we did not hire a new engineer in the last two years, but our output has grown by 80% in the last year…we stay small on purpose because we know that we can, by being small, actually just leverage these new technologies as soon as they come out.”
This is a critical lesson for marketing leaders in any organization, large or small. While the headlines are dominated by AI’s potential in content creation and campaign optimization, its most transformative impact may be on the back end. Augmenting lean teams with AI tools can dramatically increase their output without a corresponding increase in headcount. This isn’t about replacing people; it’s about empowering them to achieve more. The savings and efficiencies gained can then be redeployed as “growth capital”—funding the initial unprofitability of a new market entry or underwriting the community sponsorships that build long-term brand equity. This approach demonstrates that agility is a competitive advantage. While larger, more siloed organizations debate the merits of a new technology, a nimble team can adopt it, test it, and scale its benefits, creating a significant lead in the market.
The Strategic Imperative of a “Failure Budget”
Innovation and growth do not follow a linear path. They are the result of experimentation, and experimentation, by its very nature, includes failure. As leaders, we often pay lip service to the idea of a “test and learn” culture, but the pressure to deliver immediate, quantifiable ROI on every dollar spent can stifle the very risk-taking that leads to breakthroughs. To truly foster innovation, we must move beyond the rhetoric and institutionalize it. Delacquie champions a practical, powerful concept: formalizing a “failure budget” dedicated purely to experimentation.
“In fact, I’d say most of what I do doesn’t work, but I make it up with volume…And whenever something works, I sink my teeth in this and I will scale this so that this makes up for all the losses that I made and the things that did not work…I feel like I just keep a percentage of my budget, what I call like a failure budget. And that’s just like money for me to try something. It’s a long shot, but if ever it works, I’m like, cool, whatever can take market shares away from Google in my marketing budget I’m very happy with.”
Reframing experimentation in this way is a game-changer. A failure budget is not wasted money; it is a strategic investment in R&D for your marketing department. It gives your team explicit permission to try the long shots, to test unproven channels, and to explore nascent technologies without the fear of being penalized for a negative result. The key, as Delacquie notes, is the second half of the equation: the discipline to recognize a winner quickly and the ability to scale it aggressively. A single successful experiment can pay for a dozen that didn’t pan out. For enterprise leaders, this means creating a balanced portfolio of marketing initiatives. The majority of your budget may go to proven, reliable channels, but carving out even a small percentage for high-risk, high-reward bets is essential for discovering the growth levers of tomorrow.
The modern marketer’s playbook is not a static document; it is a dynamic framework for navigating complexity. The insights from Renaud Delacquie’s experience at Coastline Academy underscore a fundamental truth: success lies not in choosing between technology and humanity, or scale and intimacy, but in mastering their integration. It is about deploying sophisticated digital systems to enable authentic human connection. It’s about leveraging internal technological efficiency to fund external market growth. And it’s about cultivating a culture that doesn’t just tolerate failure but budgets for it as a necessary cost of innovation.
As leaders, our role is to create the conditions for this kind of integrated, agile marketing to flourish. The pace of technological and cultural change will only accelerate. The brands that will win are those led by individuals who, as Delacquie advises, maintain a holistic view of the landscape, constantly scanning for new opportunities and empowering their teams to jump on them quickly. The ultimate competitive advantage is not a bigger budget or a larger team, but the organizational capacity for continuous learning and rapid adaptation.
