Lina Segerstedt’s career began as a clothing and pattern designer for Swedish fashion brand Gina Tricot after completing her degree at the Swedish School of Textile in Borås.
– By chance, I ended up in the advertising department as an art director for Gina Tricot’s campaigns. At the same time, I realized that it was more fun to communicate about clothes than to design them, says Lina Segerstedt.
After Gina Tricot, Lina Segerstedt studied branding and advertising at Forsbergs and then worked with the advertising agency River. Her career progressed to the travel agency Thomas Cook before she heard from Twistshake through freelance work and was appointed to Head of the Brand.
– There was a lot to do related to the Twistshake brand, Lina Segerstedt says. We have grown so quickly that sometimes brand consistency had to be down-prioritized. We are currently working hard to build up our consistency, but still have a long way to go before we get there completely.
Twistshake was founded in 2014 with an innovatively designed baby bottle that was marketed through e-commerce. Since then, the company has built a broader product portfolio with a focus on baby products. Twistshake has grown every year since its inception and has a turnover of nearly 30 million euros (for 2021).
What is it like to work in marketing at such a fast-growing company?
– It’s really fun. Every day is different, and you have to enjoy the fact that it is. The key is to have engaged and passionate colleagues who help each other out. Otherwise, it would never work.
During her time at Twistshake, Lina Segerstedt has built an in-house team with its own production, today the team consists of six team members.
– When I started, there was no one working on the brand, and now we’re a whole team. We have been selective in bringing in external partners and focused on finding the right skills internally, but we are open to that in the future. Having a strong core team in-house and supplementing that with external experts for specific needs will be a winning concept going forward, I believe.
What is your focus for 2023?
– To stabilize the brand platform we’re building. We work a lot with Meta to reach our target audience and want to increase awareness of us as a brand while growing in their channels. We also want to broaden our marketing to other platforms, of course.
Much has happened that has turned things upside down in the past year. According to Lina Segerstedt, openness to change is one of the most important qualities for marketers.
– You have to be on your toes all the time and realize that the world is changing. What worked yesterday won’t work forever. You have to have a good understanding of the world around you in your profession.
Marketing professionals today balance performance marketing against brand awareness. For Lina Segerstedt, it is important to maintain both a long-term and a short-term focus when planning your marketing activities.
– Being long-term focused is difficult because it’s not as easy to measure. In newly started companies, you usually want to work very data-driven, but it’s also important to trust your gut feeling and not only do the obvious. At Twistshake, we’re good at trial and error, which is a way of thinking that could benefit more people in our industry. Good enough often goes a long way.
Writer: Rikard Hegelund, CMO at Klingit
