Lucky Saint’s Kerttu Inkeroinen on striving to outwit – not outspend – the competition

I was born and raised in Finland. I was torn between two directions when considering further education: something artistic – like furniture design – and business. I come from a family of entrepreneurs, and I settled on the idea that marketing is a beautiful combination of the two.

I studied for a master’s in marketing at university. The job market in Finland upon my graduation was tough. So I expanded my search all over Europe. My first role was in Brussels, working for an NGO, a customs organization, setting up their marketing function to help sell their training products.

After a year, I felt like I really wanted to get into the nub of marketing. I was drawn to FMCG and the big global legacy brands. I created an Excel spreadsheet of all of the major FMCG companies and saw that most of the European headquarters were in London, so that’s where I focused my search. I had heard that graduate programs are an excellent way to start your career, so I applied, and was lucky enough to be accepted by Kimberly-Clark as their first non-UK resident to be on that program.

Theirs was a really focused, well-designed program. Over the two years, you worked in varied roles and you built a strong foundation across P&L management, brand marketing and sales. The Kimberly-Clark portfolio of brands (Andrex, Kleenex, Huggies) are the sharp end of FMCG marketing, being commodity products. You really learn the power of the brand: how to build a brand for toilet paper that people want to pay more for than a non-branded, more generic item.

After that, I joined Coca-Cola. I was lucky enough to be the Powerade Sport brand manager for the London 2012 Olympics season, which was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – I will never forget Super Saturday, when our ambassador, Jessica Ennis, took home gold.

Next, I moved within Coke to look after the main Coca-Cola brand for the UK. Here, I was honing in on the importance of longer-term brand-building with a legacy brand. I was working with global assets and iconic campaigns – from the Coca-Cola Christmas Trucks to World Cup executions. It was an inspiring and rewarding time.

I took a slightly different turn after that, moving from this huge global brand into the scale-up world. After initially turning down a request from a recruiter, because if you’ve chosen to work on one of the major brands then Coca-Cola was for me the FMCG brand to be working for, the recruiter asked: “What role would you move for?” I did some digging and searching within myself. I had always been interested in entrepreneurialism as it had been my family’s background. Working in a smaller business where I could be part of the leadership team so that I could really broaden my experience appealed to me, and I gave the recruiter a very specific brief.

Nine months later, I was working at Union Hand-Roasted Coffee – an ethical speciality coffee roaster looking to launch into the home consumer market. I joined this much smaller business with a marketing team of one. It was a shock to the system, coming from Coca-Cola. But I had an amazing seven years there, overseeing their rebrand, launching into grocery, expanding my remit by running their e-commerce business as well as marketing, growing the team and scaling the business – I learned so much and made lifelong friends with the management team.

I did ponder moving back to a larger organization after this time at a scaleup, but then the Lucky Saint role came up. It felt like such an exciting opportunity: theirs was a growth category and they were looking to scale fast, and I was already a fan of the product. I joined two years ago, and now I look after marketing, e-commerce and innovation. It’s been a whirlwind.

The Lucky Saint pub with the Lucky Saint Run Club In central London

Lucky Saint’s financial reporting is not made public at the moment but from what I can find online, you’ve had a healthy £10m Series A investment in 2023 and 1,000 pubs and other venues around the UK sell Lucky Saint on draught, with a further 9,000 currently selling your bottles and cans. According to the Financial Times, revenue is doubling year on year in 2022 and in 2023. What does this all mean for Lucky Saint looking forward?

I specifically wanted to join a business that’s operating in a category that’s on that tipping point where it’s growing at pace and becoming mainstream, and there’s a chance to do something category-leading. A few years ago, having alcohol-free beer on draught was unusual. Now people expect an alcohol-free option if they go to a friend’s house or if they go to any venue, and with 75% of us moderating our alcohol intake, it’s an exciting time to work on alcohol free.

The landscape is changing fast for us as a business and for our marketing. We have a big, ambitious goal: to be the world’s defining alcohol-free brand. We are five years into the journey, and obviously we do not have the same resources that some of the major competition has at their disposal. So from a marketing point of view, we can’t outspend the competition. But we can think about marketing in a way that’s really going to cut through and deliver. This translates into things like focusing on building our distinctive brand assets, creating an aspirational brand in its own right and really leaning into the fact that our superpower is being an entirely alcohol-free brand – versus a zero variant of something else.

As a business that is only alcohol-free, we can lean into spaces where our competition cannot. In our company DNA, we talk about ‘breaking rules, honouring traditions.’ This means that we honour the beer category traditions in the way we brew and serve our beer, but we look to break the beer category conventions where we can in order to stand out from the competition.

For the past few years, we have partnered with Alcohol Change UK to be the Official Beer of Dry January – this is not something our competitors could do, because they also have alcoholic options in their portfolio. Likewise, because it is alcohol-free, we’ve managed to get Lucky Saint included in the Sainsbury’s £3.50 lunch meal deal, introducing our beer into a new occasion for consumers.

Also of note is the way we activate in sport, a traditional space for the beer category. But where our competitors typically target the sports fans and viewers, in contrast we target the doers. For example: rewarding half-marathon runners with a free Lucky Saint beer.

We have also spent a lot of time focusing on draught distribution. We now have 1,000 distribution points where you can buy Lucky Saint on draught. This is driving the general acceptance of the alcohol-free category. It is our belief that you should be able to have an alcohol-free beer as you would any other drink, so that you feel part of any social occasion and do not feel left out when everybody else is drinking pints.

We don’t see ourselves as purposefully going head-to-head against our major competition, because the category is in such fast-paced growth, there’s room for everybody and we believe that ‘the rising tide lifts all the boats.’ The more people we can bring into the alcohol-free category, the better. That being said – we are also simultaneously carving out our brand’s own distinctive space.

To get to our vision (of becoming the world’s defining alcohol-free brand) we aim to stay at the forefront of the category growth: we’re investing in data insights, category insights, PR, to ensure that we are the spokespeople for the category and seen as the category leader.

Lucky Saint’s Dry January campaign

We need to talk about your recent campaign: ‘Thou shalt go to the pub’ for which you won the Drum Award for Media Innovation.

‘Thou Shalt Go to the Pub’ was part of our January campaign, a 10,000 pint giveaway to support our ontrade customers and to drive trial with consumers.

Draught distribution is part of our strategic focus: we understand that there’s still a bit of a stigma around not drinking and it not being always seen as socially acceptable. Equally pub companies and independent pubs are a customer group that’s very important for us. And due to Covid, they’ve had a difficult few years. We were thinking: ‘How can we help support this customer group in January, when footfall is slow?’

At the same time, we also want to encourage people to socialise, even if they are doing ‘Dry January’ or if they want to moderate their consumption. We believe that the greatest reward of drinking is the social connection, not the alcohol. Pubs, with people getting together and seeing their friends is the epitome of that.

The idea behind the campaign was to give away free Lucky Saint pints in order to encourage people to go to pubs. Our media agency meticulously hand-picked the sites and placed posters outside the participating pubs, pointing people to the pub next door to get a pint of Lucky Saint by downloading a coupon into their phones. We also worked with social media influencers, ran paid social and generated PR to promote the campaign. It proved very successful, and the pubs really appreciated the initiative too.

How is your marketing team structured at Lucky Saint?

We have a small but mighty team. We have our brand team; looking after the main brand, brand activity and calendar, looking after social media, sampling, events and partnerships and also influencer activity. We have our creative team: our head of creative and a designer. We have a creative team in-house because it is such a key part of the brand and crucial for delivery of premium look across everything we do. So we’ve invested in that internal resource, as well as in an in-house PR and communications role. They ensure that we constantly reinforce our status as a leading alcohol-free brand, and are sought out as the spokesperson for the category and head of topic.

Lucky Saint out of home advertising in London

Please talk us through your approach to balancing the long and the short...

At Coca-Cola I learned about the value of long-term brand investment. In scale ups, it can be challenging because of cash flow – there is always the pressure to show an instant return on your marketing spend.

I purposefully joined a business which was brand-centric and where the founder, Luke Boase (and the whole of the business) fully believes in the power of marketing and brand as a core business growth driver. Also our shareholders come from a brand-led background and businesses and so they ‘get it’ too.

If we want to be the defining alcohol-free beer brand then we need to invest in longer-term brand building. For some scale-ups that can be a hard sell because that longer term brand investment doesn’t have the immediate payback.

As a business, you need to be comfortable with that. We don’t currently invest in econometrics that might help prove the ROI on our brand work, but we do track awareness, consideration and other brand metrics.

Our business believes that when those brand tracking metrics shift (in a positive direction) then that is adding value to the business in the longer term, which directly leads to an increase in sales.

We invited Rory Sutherland to our Lucky Saint pub a couple of weeks ago to give a talk. He said: “You don’t always need to prove everything yourself. You can also look at people and brands and businesses that are doing things well and trust that they have validated research that shows that this works.”

If we look at any of the major legacy brands in the world, they invest in the longer-term brand building, which would suggest that this approach works.

Brand advertising also really matters to our trade customers – both in grocery and on trade. Our partners see that we’re investing in our brand and this helps unlock trade support and distribution.

How important is creativity in great communications?

Creativity is crucial as an amplifier for anything you do in terms of media spend, and especially for scale-ups or when your budgets aren’t there to be able to outspend competition.

When I talk about creativity, I mean the magic that makes your communication trigger an emotion. For example, you don’t see us directly talking about how great the beer tastes in our out-of-home advertising. We don’t focus on the direct attributes of the product. Instead, we focus on triggering an emotion and making people connect with our brand. When people see our communications, our goal is for them to have this moment of: “Aaah” – a slight curling of your lip or raising the corners of your mouth – we are not a ‘laugh out loud funny’ brand, but are aiming for wry wit and beautiful esthetic.

The image we have used repeatedly in our out-of-home creative was captured by Rankin: it’s a beautiful black-and-white image of nun with the bottle of our beer – an unexpected combination. It creates that emotion. You look twice, and then you read the copy line in our religious tone of voice, which hopefully then builds on that emotion and delivers on distinctiveness. You can really amplify your media spend with outstanding creative.

What initiative are you the most proud of at Lucky Saint?

At Lucky Saint, I have been championing the importance of consistency and distinctiveness over the temptation to do something new with every campaign. As marketeers, we want to always create something new and bring something exciting to the market and get bored of our own work before our consumers do.

I talk a lot about fresh consistency, which, in our case, means defining and codifying the key visual assets and then being disciplined in their use. These were key lessons learned from my time at Coca-Cola: be consistent and show up in the same way to your consumers time and time again.

Our marketing team champion that idea. They’re brilliant and keep delivering amazing work. As a five-year-old brand, we still have modest marketing budgets. And yet, our team have been up there winning awards as the Brand of the Year for the Marketing Society. This year we’ve been shortlisted for Marketing Week Brand of the Year – up against all of these global brands. I think it’s a testimony to what the team is doing and we’re very proud.

How do you manage your teams to get the best out of them?

I do not micromanage as I believe that approach delivers the best results. My approach is more about coaching than telling. I get my team to find their own answers and solutions to their challenges and support them along the way – as opposed to providing ready-made solutions. I love the leadership style advice ‘Be a sheepdog, not a husky’ – don’t pull from the front, support from behind. I like to think that I encourage new and creative thinking and personal growth in that way. I’d like my team to see me as a sounding board and I make sure that they get to stretch their skills and develop.

Another crucial part is our open feedback culture. We have weekly two-way feedback in our 121s. I give feedback, and I get feedback from my team, and some of the most valuable feedback I have received is from my team. Doing this on a weekly basis enshrines it as a routine – part of ‘the day-to-day’, rather than waiting months for an annual review.

Just to dig into that: you do weekly one-to-one feedback with your team?

It’s actually across the whole business. Two-way feedback is really important at Lucky Saint, and we also champion ‘challenge and build’ culture to make our work stronger. It’s like a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it.

Lucky Saint were the official beer of The Hackney Half Marathon

What advice would you give your younger self if you could go back in time? What might you encourage a younger Kerttu to do more of – or perhaps avoid

I would tell myself to believe in myself more and also to take more risks: if an opportunity presents itself, you should throw your hat in the ring. I definitely held the view that I need to have all the skills for a role before applying for it. I would think: “I don’t know everything about this role. There’ll be somebody else who knows all the stuff that I do not.”

I have learned that you don’t need to know everything. Trusting in your own ability to learn allows you to relish the challenge and grow into roles as you stretch your own potential. You don’t need to know it all, you need to be able to find out and learn and figure it out.

I am lucky enough to have a dad who is very wise, even though he’s in a completely different industry. When I was considering the move from Coca-Cola to Union Coffee, I called my Dad, who – as I mentioned – is an entrepreneur. I ran the options past him, and said: “Do you think this is madness? Because I’m on a good track in a big, safe, global organization – and yet I’m thinking about going into this scale-up, full of uncertainty.”

He said: “Well, where are you going to learn the most?” The answer was Union Coffee. It promised to be a completely different world. I would be part of the leadership team, learning about everything from profit and loss to cash flow: the business nuts and bolts, people management, building the culture – gaining experience beyond my marketing job remit.

I actually even took a pay cut when I went there. Again my dad gave sage advice; that I had so many years of my career left that if I could afford it, I shouldn’t worry about it but I should prioritise learning. It was brilliant advice.

If there's one thing you know about marketing, it is…

The best job in the world. Because it is so multifaceted and ever-changing. It straddles everything from behavioral psychology to commercial and creative. The thing is that there’s no blueprint on how to do it. You need to take risks. You need to be comfortable with uncertainty and constant change: not having a clear right or wrong.

I think it suits certain personalities better than others. You need to be able to ask open-ended questions and be comfortable with the fact that there might be multiple right answers. Often there’s not going to be one clear response. You need to enjoy that constant search and constant change and the consideration of multiple options and possibilities. If you’re happy in that space, then you will thrive in the marketing space.

You might die tomorrow so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency helping brands do spectacular stuff people like to talk about. wyw.agency.

Little Grey Cells is Tim Healey, founder and curator of Little Grey Cells Club, the UK’s premier Senior Marketer meet up.