Lucky Saint’s clever messaging judo

Full disclosure: one half of this studio doesn't drink. So we've seen, read, and tried pretty much everything the AF beer has to offer.

And most of it sounds like this: "so good you won't know it's AF." "You won't miss the booze." "Sober never tasted so good."

And that's alright. Emerging categories have to do the inelegant hygiene work at the beginning before they can go bigger, we get that.

But sometimes, this kind of copy accidentally puts the absence front and centre. And nobody is drinking alcohol free beer for what it lacks.

Lucky Saint don't do that. And that's why this ad went straight in our swipe file.

There are an awful lot of things going on in this ad that are very AF-specific. So we're not going to dwell on those.

(DM us if you want to nerd out on AF drinks marketing though.)

But the cool thing Lucky Saint are doing here is that marketing buzzphrase you've heard a million times: they're zigging when everyone else is zagging.

This ad ran in Dry January. Every AF brand under the sun was running "You won't miss the booze" kind of ads. The whole category was framing not drinking as something you suffer through or put up with.

But Lucky Saint flipped that and positioned drinking their beer as drinking. Not "not drinking". Just drinking AF beer.

It's a subtle shift, but it makes a huge difference. The brands we choose, the choices we make, the clothes we wear... social identity theory and self-congruence theory tell us that we choose brands and products that line up with who we are.

Lots of AF (and meat-free/diet/etc...) messaging relies on customers changing their idea of who they are. Instead, Lucky Saint just changed their messaging to meet customers where they were at.

They're still beer drinkers. They just drink Lucky Saint now.

Wicked smaht.

Before your next campaign or copy update, look at what your whole category is saying. Not just your competitors but the wider conversation too. What's the dominant message? What's everyone assuming? Is there a way to write your message so it zigs while everyone else zags?

Even better, is there a way to tie your brand into the way that your customers see themselves? Align it with their identity?