Scaling growth through brand and product synergy: Lucie De Antoni’s playbook

I’ve been in B2B tech for most of my career, starting with AirPlus International, a Lufthansa financial arm, then jumping into hotel e-commerce platforms and fintech with Jenji and Garantme. It’s always been about tech for me. Now, four weeks into being CMO at PerfectStay, I’m in pure B2C e-commerce, and it’s a blast. We create travel offers for big airlines names like Air France, Transavia, Emirates and more recently Turkish Airlines, but also for marketplate like Veepee or Holiday Pirates Historically, it was all France-focused, but my arrival syncs with new international deals, like Turkish Holidays, hitting ten markets. I’m diving into this scaling chaos headfirst. In B2B, marketing was about feeding the sales pipeline, proving ROI fast, especially when launching new regions—with events and ambassador programs cutting sales cycles in half. At Jenji, I threw together a 15-person team in three months, scattered everywhere, chasing mobile users from the US to Asia. Stakes were high with fresh funds, so we moved like lightning. That’s the agility I’m bringing here.

At PerfectStay, marketing doesn’t just support, it drives growth and owns conversion. That’s the big flip. In B2B, you’re often a step back, helping sales close with human tricks like one-on-one recommendations and digital touchpoints. Here, we’re the ones making bookings happen. It’s not just about buzz, it’s about results. My B2B days taught me to launch markets lean and mean, blending brand and performance. I did European rollouts at Jenji with tight budgets and big expectations. Now, I’m scaling an e-commerce engine across borders, keeping our martech stack from buckling. It’s less about backing someone else and more about steering the ship. That’s what fires me up.

It’s not just functional, it’s cultural. Take Turkey as an example. A Turk in France booking a trip to Turkey wants something totally different from a Turk in Turkey heading to Europe. You can’t push one offer everywhere and expect it to stick. Efficiency’s key, but you’ve got to nail local quirks. B2B drilled process into me, and I leaned on that hard. But B2C needs, more than ever, creativity too. I’m pulling from those rapid acquisition days under pressure, adapting them to make PerfectStay a name that resonates across markets. It’s a mindset shift, owning the outcome instead of setting the stage, and I’m loving it.

I’ve always had two battles: acquisition and brand. Acquisition gets you in, but brand keeps you there. I’m 100% convinced that without a strong brand, your acquisition strategy hits a wall eventually. It’s been a constant thread through my career, from mentoring startups at Station F or Willa Incubator—where I stumbled into helping female entrepreneurs prioritize high-impact moves—to leading teams at various companies and now PerfectStay. In tech, especially B2B, founders often think a great product and slick processes sell themselves. I tell them no way. If your brand isn’t known, prospects pick the competitor they’ve heard of because it’s reassuring. It’s human nature. Even in B2C here, brand underpins everything. You can’t just throw SEA cash at it and hope. I’d rather spend less and win on recognition than outbid everyone and fade into nothing.

From my experience, it’s usually when investors start poking. They’ll say they’ve seen rival solutions pitched to their fund, or partners mention competitors, and they ask how you’re different. That’s the red flag. I see it mentoring entrepreneurs who’ve been grinding for a year, maybe pivoting or scaling. They’ll obsess over a fancy acquisition stack, but if the brand’s weak, growth stalls fast. You can’t scale on budget or people alone, it’s mindset and strategy too. In B2C, it’s obvious: a known brand boosts sales almost mechanically. B2B resists this, but it’s just as true. Founders get hung up thinking good tech is enough. I say it’s a circle: your product can be amazing, but without a known brand, prospects bolt to what feels safer. That’s when you know it’s time to double down.

First thing I do is an audit. Is there a unified value proposition? Nine times out of ten, it’s chaos. One sales rep pitches X, another Y, because closing deals trumps consistency. Step one is unity, and a logo with a catchy line doesn’t cut it. You’ve got to go deeper. In B2B, content is everything—think events or meaty write-ups that educate your market, reassure them, tackle problems they haven’t even clocked yet. At Jenji, targeting finance directors, we had to prove our tool wasn’t just nice-to-have, it was a must. That’s brand at work, building trust and clarity. I’d start with a quick check: have you even worked on your brand? Some say sure, we’ve got a logo and a claim. Great start, but that’s kindergarten stuff. You need a clear position, a story that sticks. Mentoring taught me to list every option, weigh the impact, and hand startups a tight action plan—that’s how brand turns into results.

I point to the cycle. Your product can be a gem, but if no one knows you, they’ll pick the name they trust. It’s not fluff, it’s psychology. In B2B, I’ve seen investors force the issue when they spot rivals creeping in. That’s when founders listen. I show them the data too: weak brand, longer sales cycles, lost deals. It’s not about pretty visuals, it’s about a value proposition that lands. Content’s my weapon there—like B2B events where people swap real stories. It’s how you educate, how you stand out. Skeptics come around when they see it’s not optional, it’s survival.

Product-market fit is absolutely everything when you’re in tech. It’s what keeps you alive. When you’re just starting out, if you’ve got a startup that’s still kicking, you’ve got some kind of fit going, otherwise you wouldn’t even be around. At PerfectStay, we hit the ground running with travel demand, it was there from the beginning. But as you grow and start layering on new features, that fit can slip away from you quick. I saw this up close at Garantme. We had this incredible tech, saving time and money to all our clients, like nobody’s business, but SaaS adoption lagged, too ahead of its time maybe. My mentoring sessions with startups show me the same: over-engineer and you’re dead. It matters because you can pour your heart into something brilliant, but if it doesn’t match what people need right at that moment, it’s not going anywhere. You can build yourself right into a corner, and I’ve been there.

We had to figure it out on the spot. Our tech was so far ahead that companies didn’t even realize they had the problems we were solving. So we went big on education, showing them why those under-the-surface issues were a deal and how we could make them better. But we also pulled back a bit. Instead of pushing the whole crazy advanced package, we zoomed in on what they could use right then and there. It was a niche market, and even with something that good, if it’s too out there, people don’t bite. We sharpened our positioning, made it about immediate wins, and slowly but surely, adoption started picking up. You’ve got two paths: teach the market toTech catch up or meet it where it stands. We mixed both, and it got us moving forward.

Product marketing is the bridge, it’s what holds it all together. I fell into it early on without even knowing what it was called back then. Product teams are all about nailing the tech, making it perfect, and marketing’s running after growth, but product marketing sits there asking: does this actually work for the market today? It’s like being the voice of the client in the room. At Garantme, we’d see product and market drifting apart, and this was the thing that pulled us back in line. You’re not there to turn a simple story into some tangled mess, you’re there to give people what they’re expecting. We’d dig into user interviews, run panels, do all that discovery work just to really understand who we were talking to. Then we’d tweak the messaging, adjust the features, do whatever it took to make it click with them. It’s not the flashiest job, but it’s the difference between scaling and stalling out. Then, product marketing is stepping in, clarifying what it could do for them at that exact moment, and we pushed education so they’d get it. It’s about making sure every release lands right, especially when you’re growing fast. The question of market product fit has finally, according to me, no barrier, no industry type. It’s the same battle everywhere. And it’s a huge topic for keeping clients. You launch something, and it’s not just about that moment, it’s spotting what they’ll need next, setting up ways to bring them deeper in with cross-sell, keeping them around. Product teams focus on fixing what’s out there, but we’re always thinking about what’s coming after. That’s been my edge, keeping growth steady beyond just that first win.

Retention’s my big thing at PerfectStay these days, no doubt about it. Travel’s tough, you know, acquisition costs are sky-high, and if we’re spending a fortune every time someone books, we’re not going to keep up with the giants. Our massive project is all about repeat customers, it’s huge. The whole marketing team’s in on it, acquisition, content, CRM, merchandising, we’re all obsessed with this. Three weeks in, it’s already clear this is where the real growth lives, not just grabbing one-off travelers but making sure they come back to us.

We’re getting really smart with it, digging into segmentation and all the behavioral bits we can grab. You see someone quoting in 45 seconds but taking an hour to buy, that tells me something about how they think, and we jump on that. Our CRM stack’s doing the heavy lifting, pushing offers that fit just right, and we’re tweaking it constantly. Cost is everything here. Re-engaging someone’s way less than starting from scratch with new people. Your client list isn’t infinite, you’ve got to make the most of it. And we’re boosting the data too. Someone hasn’t booked in 15 months, maybe they’ve had a kid, their travel needs are totally different now. We’re using third-party tools to figure out what’s up with them, what might click next. Merchandising’s all over the extras, like baggage deals or pre-trip perks, but marketing’s the one who’s got to bring it home. It’s a massive project, honestly, and it’s how we keep things rolling in this travel e-commerce world.

For this repeat customer push, we’re leaning hard on our CRM stack, it’s the heart of it all. That’s where we’re pulling the segmentation, tracking how people move, like those quick quotes or slow buys, and tailoring offers off that. We’re always adjusting it, making it sharper. Then there’s the data enrichment, we’re hooking up with third-party tools to get a fuller picture of who these clients are now, not just who they were last time they booked. It’s a team thing, merchandising’s digging into the incentives, figuring out what like baggage options or trip add-ons works, and marketing’s tying it all together. That’s what’s keeping those repeat bookings coming, staying on our toes with what we’ve got.

If I’m building from nothing, I’m grabbing HubSpot, Slack, and Notion to start. HubSpot’s CRM and CMS are dead simple but scale fast, perfect for kicking things off. Slack keeps the team tight, instant comms, no fluff. Notion’s my project backbone, nothing beats it for keeping chaos in check. If I had to add one, it’s Whimsical. It’s visual gold, mapping flows so even non-marketers get it quick, proving the point every time.

I’m rereading this gem called  Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life, yeah, the longest title ever! One of my old bosses gave it to me way back, and it’s hitting different now with this PerfectStay job. It’s all about the psychology of your client, especially in travel, and how that shapes what I do in marketing. It’s gold for anyone who cares about brand or just getting people, I’d recommend it to anyone who’ll listen.

Best advice? It’s all about making the mayonnaise work. Everything’s a recipe, team, strategy, product, and if the mix isn’t right, you’re sunk. You’ve got to have all the ingredients and blend them well, that’s how you win. It’s stuck with me forever.