​A closer look at Lucky Saint’s campaign to become the nation’s go-to alcohol-free beer

Become the on-trade’s favourite alcohol-free brand.

Create talkability in press and social media.

Sample thousands of consumers in venue.

Insight

The pub is a great British institution. But our beloved locals are under threat. Since 2000 a quarter of all pubs have been forced to close, with the situation only worsening during Covid.

January is a famously quiet month in hospitality, due to people cutting down on their drinking, making Dry Jan an unpopular cause with the on-trade.

With an award-winning lager pouring on draught, Lucky Saint is the perfect solution to get consumers back into the pub in January.

Our Campaign

The Pub has been the spiritual home of the UK for centuries. So why, during the most dispiriting month of the year, are pubs sat empty? With so many great alcohol-free options, Dry Jan doesn’t have to be a quiet month at your local. This January, Lucky Saint is getting you back into the pub without breaking your Dry January, proclaiming…Thou Shalt Go To The Pub.

Our Strategy

GET: A national pub group

TO: Give us incremental draught tap listings for our award-winning alcohol-free Superior Unfiltered Lager

BY: Driving people into their pubs with free pints, given away via paid social and proximity out of home

THEREBY: Sampling thousands of people with Lucky Saint on draught in venue, raising awareness for our brand and draught offering, as well as driving incremental revenue as taps stayed on throughout the year.

Our Approach

We knew to make this plan work we needed two things: firstly, an easy-to-use consumer journey to claim the free pint with as few barriers to entry as possible and secondly: a pub group to work with who would allow us to achieve our objectives at scale, on a national level.

We aimed high, pitching the proposal to the biggest pub group in the UK, Mitchells and Butlers – luckily they were as keen as we were to drive people into pubs in January and shared our belief that the greatest reward of drinking is the social connection, not the alcohol – the pinnacle being a freshly poured pint enjoyed with friends in the pub. They were excited at the prospect of a paid social media campaign driving people into their pubs for a free pint of Lucky Saint, and loved our idea of individual OOH posters directing people to individual pubs – they knew, as we did, that people don’t tend to drink alone, and so walking into the pub with the person claiming a free Lucky Saint would be a group of friends ready to order a round.

Once M&B were on board, we moved onto our second part of the challenge: a seamless consumer journey to claim the free pint. For this, we partnered with Drift Rock – a leading digital couponing platform that was already integrated into the M&B POS system, meaning people could scan the QR code on one of our posters or click on a paid social ad, enter their email address and receive their free pint coupon in just three easy steps that took no longer than 2 minutes.

Next, we worked with our Media Buyer agency Squadron on the painstaking process of mapping out OOH sites within 50m of each of the pubs we had won draught listings in. Our Head of Creative then designed 50 different posters, each bearing the name of the individual pub, to make sure people knew exactly where to claim their free pint.

We supplemented the OOH campaign with paid social to give the campaign scale, running ads across Meta and driving thousands of people to our data capture landing page.

This innovative coming together of traditional OOH media and a cutting-edge digital platform allowed the campaign to deliver on two fronts: firstly, M&B were delighted to see real-life posters pointing to their pubs, and to show the effort and care that had gone into selecting the sites and designing the creative, and secondly, the paid social allowed us to achieve scale to drive thousands of people into M&B pubs, which the posters couldn’t have delivered on their own.

Then, we took the campaign to another level using PR, social media, and influencers. We partnered with influencers in London and Brighton to create ‘Pub Guides’ on where to find a great pint of Lucky Saint, helping to drive awareness of our draught offering.

We then shared the news across trade PR, with a homepage feature on the Morning Advertiser, to help us spread the word in the trade and aid us on our mission to become the trade’s most loved alcohol-free beer.

To give our campaign even more reach on a tight budget, we used innovative influencer gifting to spread the word and create talkability. We gifted an empty pint glass, inviting them to scan our Tap Map on a postcard included in the gift box, find their local and take their pint glass to be filled up, on us. The activity received posts from influencers with a combined following of 4 million.

To amplify the campaign and recruit customers into the category, we delivered over 150 activations in pubs across the country including; in-venue samplings, staff incentives to drive rate of sale from upselling to ‘owning’ key social moments - for example, sponsoring pub quiz nights and offering bar tab and merch as prizes or offering complimentary Lucky Saint when you book in for a Sunday roast with friends.

Results

The campaign exceeded all KPIs, won the hearts of publicans and made national news.

Lucky Saint draught listings increased by 81% year on year vs last Dry January.

Brand awareness increased by 59%.

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