Heineken UK’s director of innovation, insights and strategic planning tells Tim Healey why marketers need to stay grounded, listen closely and never overestimate the role their brand plays in people’s lives.
You’ve worked across major drinks brands like Treasury Wine Estates, Bacardi Brown-Forman, and now over a decade at Heineken, where you’re currently director of innovation, insights and strategic planning. Can you walk us through your career journey?
I read English and Psychology at university. I was interested in the area of marketing, building on my psychology degree: thinking about why people do things and how you can influence others. I got a job at Treasury Wine Estates as an Events assistant to start with – it was a real baptism of fire, with some valuable lessons around stakeholder management and attention to detail, that I still draw on today.
It was an Australian wine company with a small team in the UK, but part of a larger business internationally. They were very good at training and giving you an understanding of the basics in marketing and that became my marketing apprenticeship, and I learned a lot. I had a couple of great managers who really took some bets on me and helped me move through the ranks.
After 10 years, I moved to Bacardi Brown Forman working as senior brand manager for Jack Daniels in the off-trade. It gave me a real commercial lens, much closer to the execution and customers. I was eager to have more strategic, end-to-end input in my brand management, so I moved to Heineken UK.
When I arrived, I was senior brand manager for John Smith’s and Newcastle Brown Ale – both amazing brands. I think John Smith’s is probably still my favorite brand. I was given real freedom to work on what is widely considered to be a British classic.
After a few years working on those two, I moved into innovation, which had always been an area that I was interested in. As marketers, we have this great opportunity to really understand our consumers deeply and then try to provide solutions to their needs.
I’ve been in innovation for the last eight years. My role expanded in 2019 to include strategic planning and insights. It is a big, broad role with a team of 20 people spread across multiple functions and split between London and Edinburgh. We’re at the heart of the business, answering questions on consumers, market forecasting and brand performance, while also shaping the long-term agenda with innovation.
Heineken Holding’s product portfolio for the UK
What is the offer at Heineken?
We have multiple brands across beer and cider with over 25% value share in the UK. These are some of the UK’s most loved brands, ranging from Foster’s, Heineken and Birra Moretti in beer to Strongbow and Old Mout in cider. As consumers’ needs evolve we’ve introduced new brands including Cruzcampo Spanish Lager and Inch’s Apple Cider. We’re also starting to move into ‘beyond beer,’ which is everything from ready-to-drink to adult soft drinks.
In addition to our brand portfolio, we have a brilliant pub estate. Star Pubs comprises 2,400 pubs spread across the UK. They provide a unique testing ground for our innovations and are also a great place to come together with our colleagues and friends.
Heineken Holding’s revenue in 2023 was €36.4bn. What does this mean for your team in the next 12 months?
Heineken has a really strong position in the UK market and globally. We’ve been growing share over the last year, but there’s always more work to do, especially when we look at the area of innovation. We believe that innovation is a key lever to help us unlock future category growth.
My team focus on how we search for these opportunities. How can we fulfil more consumer needs and simultaneously drive penetration and harness the power of our brands? I would say that we’re in a good position in the category, but growth isn’t a given, and you need to keep topping up that leaky bucket.
The Heineken UK team
Could you tell us how your team is structured?
Our total marketing department consists of circa 80 people. That’s split across innovation and insights, which is my team, our beer and cider brand teams, marketing activation and media. We work closely with our agency partners, but have also found it important to build specialist capability like media and insights in-house. With that model, we’re able to upskill the whole department across the different marketing specialisms, making us better-rounded marketers.
Drawing on your leadership expertise, what has your career taught you that helps you to make a great team?
Diversity is key. I think you should avoid a ‘cookie-cutter’ approach where everybody is the same. You should aspire to bring in different people, people with different profiles to yourself that think in different ways and who can challenge the status quo. We need to also to match that with a culture of openness, where everybody feels able to be themselves. Only then can you build a team that really performs well together.
What’s your first memory of a marketing success that you were part of, where you felt: this is the role for me.
I think it was working on the John Smith’s brand. When I joined Heineken, it was a much-loved brand with a very loyal consumer following. We identified an opportunity to open it up to new audiences whilst balancing everything from the past that made it special.
This led to a big 360 review, where we looked at everything from the positioning to design. In effect we had a mini relaunch. It delivered above our expectations from a business perspective. To deliver that whole process from start to finish was incredibly fulfilling.
AI in marketing: what might be some pros and cons?
AI enables us to get faster results, particularly from a research perspective. We can get answers to business questions in a relatively short period of time, rather than the usual two, three weeks that we see with traditional research groups or undertaking a big quantitative study.
If I had to choose a ‘con’ it would be that while AI can give you good, high-level answers, it’s not a substitute for actually speaking to real consumers. You would miss so much of the nuance if you were to only take that view. It’s all about balance: making sure that you really understand why and what you’re using AI for.
Heineken’s ‘dry January’ campaign for Heineken 0.0
Emotional connection is key to brand loyalty. How does Heineken approach this across its portfolio?
It all starts with consumer understanding – gaining that deep insight around needs and motivations. Quite often, people won’t tell you what they want in the future because they don’t know. But if we spend time with them, listen intently, we can join the dots. We can then identify the role that our brands play in fulfilling these needs and leverage our positioning as a springboard for ideas that create an emotional connection.
Could you tell us about a customer research discovery that you’ve made that you found surprising?
It’s not a huge revelation but a good reminder. We love our brands and we think that consumers love our brands. We have this perception that they’re thinking about them 24/7.
In reality, they’re a really small part of our consumers’ lives, and in the most part they’re not thinking about them at all. We shouldn’t confuse ourselves and the affinity we have for our brands with what’s important for consumers.
Could you tell us about a marketing mistake that you’ve made and what you learned from it?
Working in innovation there are always lots of projects that don’t go as you’d hoped. You start with a great idea and on paper it should be a huge success, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work. It’s important not to be disheartened – there are always learnings whatever the outcome. Sometimes, we’ll come back to the idea at a later stage with a different result – right time/right place can definitely be a factor.
Cruzcampo was considered 2024’s ‘sensation in the alcohol category’ (The Grocer)
What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?
I don’t think it’s so prevalent now, but early on in my career, marketers were seen as typically only owning positioning and communications. The commercialization of brands was dealt with by other teams – mainly sales.
This has really changed: it’s great to see that marketers now are becoming CEOs of their brands and bringing with them a full understanding of the commercial proposition.
What advice might you give your younger self if you could go back in time?
I would tell myself not to be so obsessed with ‘moving up the ladder.’ I think there’s value in lateral moves within marketing and honing your specialism. Sometimes we can feel a lot of pressure to be moving at the same trajectory as our peers.
This pressure creates a set of false milestones to hit. A squiggly career path where you learn new things from those lateral moves can be hugely beneficial. When I think about marketing, it can be learning more customer marketing, working on brand strategy or moving into sales and picking up skills there – all of these disciplines make you a much more well-rounded and knowledgeable marketer.
So my advice would be to gain as much knowledge as you can working in different areas of marketing, and not obsessing so much about having to hit that next job stage within two years every time you begin a new role.
Italian lager Birra Moretti has overtaken Carling to become the best-selling lager in the UK.
What question would you like me to ask the next senior marketer when I interview them?
When was the last time that you spoke to one of your consumers and what did you learn? I think sometimes we’re not as close to our consumers as we think we are. That’s especially true at higher levels within businesses.
Your question from a senior marketer that I previously interviewed is: what is your favorite advert from your youth that triggers nostalgia?
The Cadbury’s Gorilla advert is the one that always sticks out for me. It’s so bonkers. It’s an ad that is instantly recognizable – whether you understood it or not, it didn’t really matter. There’s something very comforting about the Cadbury’s brand as well – they’re brilliant at establishing an emotional connection.
I think so much of what we create as marketers isn’t memorable. To be able to stand the test of time and be remembered many years later is quite unusual.
If there’s one thing you know about marketing, it is…
Marketing is the growth engine of any business. As marketers, sometimes we don’t always claim that role and it is ours – because without marketing, there is no long-term sustainable growth.
This interview has already appeared in The Drum. Discover the best campaigns, industry insights and interviews from world-leading marketers, creatives and more.
