2023 Marketing Legend shares insights on leadership, career development and giving back to our community
“Confident humility.”
Those two words, perhaps better than any, help capture the secret behind the success of 2023 Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends inductee Sandra Sanderson, chief marketing officer of Empire Company Limited and Sobeys Inc.
Sandra shared her story — from childhood fascination to the top of Canada’s marketing industry — with a packed house at IBM’s York Street office this evening during a fireside chat and audience Q&A with Santo Ligotti, president of AMA Toronto, as part of the chapter’s Legendary Leadership Series.
Sandra was introduced by 2021 Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends inductee Sharifa Khan, founder and president of Balmoral Multicultural Marketing, a full-service agency that has taken multicultural marketing mainstream, helping Empire’s FreshCo, CHALO!, Sobeys, Safeway and other banners connect with Canada’s diverse ethnic communities.
In relating Sandra’s many accomplishments, Sharifa expressed the spirit of the Legendary Leadership Series, saying: “For everyone who wants to further their career in marketing, you need to learn from the best, be inspired and empower your leadership potential.”
An early fascination
Sandra arrived in Canada with her parents from Hong Kong when she was just eight years old and from a young age had her sights set on a career in marketing.
“In high school, I decided that I wanted to be in marketing because I’d heard it was a unique mix of art and science, where you got to build relationships with customers, and I thought that was fascinating,” Sandra says.
That fascination set the course for a storied career spanning consumer-packaged goods, entertainment and retail with P&G, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Canada Post, Universal Studios, White House Black Market, Shoppers Drug Mart, Walmart and now Empire Company Limited.
Sandra credits her early days in CPG for giving her a strong foundation in marketing, including the need to “ground strategy in consumer insights and to create sharp and distinct edges between your brand and your competitors.”
Learning to lead by empowering others
Sandra faced one of the toughest adjustments of her career at Kraft, where she was first brought on in 1993 to reverse the food giant’s lagging salad dressing business. She was promoted to marketing director after driving share growth for the first time in years.
“It was a great honour for me and I was excited, but I was also scared because it was a brand-new role,” she says.
“With that promotion, I had to make the leap from managing just one brand to leading a portfolio of five brands, with a much bigger team,” she adds. “But, because I wanted to prove myself, I made the mistake of falling back on my strengths as a product manager”.
Rather than adapt her leadership style to empower those around her, she micromanaged.
“My VP kept trying to coach me, but I was really un-coachable. I wouldn’t listen and I just kept doing what I was doing,” she recalls. “Eventually, he said, ‘I’m going to take a gamble. I’m working on a restructuring of the marketing team, and I plan to expand your portfolio from five brands to ten. You’re either going to learn to elevate yourself and allow your team to lead or you’re going to sink.’ It was definitely a sink-or-swim moment.”
Over time, Sandra discovered a different role for herself centered on supporting her team to succeed.
“I started to understand how I could help make their jobs easier by aligning with my cross-functional peers, learning from people around me and leveraging their skills,” she says. “If I had done that sooner, I would have been a more effective leader.”
Forging a closer relationship with customers
After 12 years in CPG, Sandra wanted to try something different, and she soon had her mind set on transitioning into the world of retail.
“I wanted to be a retail marketer because it was an opportunity to really forge a closer relationship with customers,” she says.
At the time, she believed that the discipline, skills and strategic know-how she had accumulated in CPG would add value to a retail organization. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned.
“For one role, I did nine interviews and, at the end, I heard back, ‘We decided we needed someone who already has retail experience,’” Sandra recalls. “I learned it was going to be really hard for me to transition to a new industry where I had no track record.”
On the verge of giving up, Sandra got a call from a recruiter offering an opportunity with a company with more than 7,000 outlets across Canada. It wasn’t what she expected.
“He said, ‘It’s Canada Post.’ I actually said ‘No’ a couple of times, but then the CMO flew to Toronto and insisted on meeting, so I took the meeting and eventually decided to sign up and become their GM of brand marketing,” Sandra says.
While working for one of Canada’s oldest crown corporations might not sound like a bold entrance into retail, it provided Sandra some valuable growth opportunities.
“I had the opportunity to be a change agent and bring new thinking to the organization, and to work with companies like Indigo, Amazon and The Bay, so I gained knowledge of retailers,” she says. “I was also on a team that worked on the design of a flagship post office at Yonge and Eglinton, which won store design awards. That experience gave me the credibility and confidence that I needed to enter retail later on.”
Transforming an Empire
Sandra joined Empire Limited in 2018, after she was contacted by CEO Michael Medline, who had recently been hired to return a company facing slumping shares and slumping confidence to profitable growth.
“Michael had developed a transformation strategy where marketing played a pivotal role,” Sandra says. “He believed in the power of marketing so much that he made it part of the executive team and a direct report to the CEO for the first time in the company’s history.”
The position came with a portfolio of banners including Sobeys, Safeway, FreshCo, Foodland, Thrifty Foods and more, and oversight over a range of functions, including brand marketing, sports partnerships, loyalty, community investments, consumer insights and an in-house creative agency.
“They were looking for someone to help transform how consumers connected with the brands and who could develop a clear positioning for each of the banners,” Sandra recalls. “They also wanted someone who could transform their loyalty program and take the company from traditional to digital marketing. I wanted to be a part of Empire’s transformation and decided to take the job.”
Sandra and her team led Empire’s departure from Air Miles to become a co-owner of Scene+ with Scotiabank and Cineplex. It was one of the biggest, most complex, most cross-functional and high stakes transformations ever undertaken by Empire. The transition went very smoothly and Scene+ has since become the second largest loyalty program in Canada, with more than 15 million members.
Spurred on by a CEO with a passion for sports, Sandra also took Empire on a journey to become the first ever “Official Grocer of Team Canada.” The experience, she says, has taught her that, as a leader, you don’t need to know everything about everything.
“I have an awesome team and they’ve taught me so much about sports sponsorship,” Sandra says. “I learned that I didn’t need to be an expert in sports, because it was really about marketing and how we created an emotional connection with customers.”
… to confident humility
Today, Sandra is active in giving back, serving on boards such as the Special Olympics and Scene+, as well as coaching up-and-coming marketers as part of AMA Toronto’s Mentor Exchange program. Despite all she does for the community, she emphasizes that, for her, inspiring the next generation of Legends starts at home.
“I always tell my daughter, ‘When you’re at a crossroads and you’re not sure what you want to do, just ask yourself what you would do if you weren’t afraid,’” she says. “Sometimes it makes me think differently, makes me reflect and helps me to confront my fears, so I can decide whether or not it’s something I can overcome.”
She adds that, no matter what stage you are at in your career, it is important to have an on-going sense of curiosity and a willingness to keep learning.
“There’s always a tension between being an expert and a learner, and there are so many things that I’m just learning now,” Sandra says. “Martech, for example, didn’t exist when I started out in marketing, but now it’s a very important part of my CMO responsibility.”
Rather than be intimidated by the flood of change, however, Sandra has continued to lead by keeping a sharp focus on the customer.
“It’s not always about being an expert, it’s about leading something,” she says. “As a leader, you can be confident, but still have a sense of humility about what you don’t know and leverage the strengths of others.”
She adds that, whether through mentoring, volunteering or just exploring beyond your organization, it is important to get out there and connect with others.
“It’s really important to have a network that you can call out to and feel a sense of community with,” she says. “When you network, you meet people, you find out things and you can open up doors.”
Special thanks
AMA Toronto would like to thank our presenting sponsor Balmoral Multicultural Marketing and our partners Globe Media Group, IBM and Stonehenge Digital Studios for helping stage this event. For details about future Legendary Leadership Series and other AMA events, please visit our events page here.
About Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends
Founded in 2004, Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends honours inspiring Canadian leaders who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of excellence in the field of marketing. The award’s year-round program, created to spotlight the stories, people and brands behind Canada’s greatest marketing successes, recognizes a noteworthy body of work and a life-time of achievements and leadership. Nominations for induction are held annually. Find out more about how we’re celebrating the Hall’s 20th anniversary celebration here.
About the author
Michael Thede is a PR manager and senior writer with AMA Toronto. He recently moved to Toronto after 20 years in Asia where he led international communications for a business school in Shanghai. He has also worked for brands such as Education First, Disney and Porsche. Michael has a BA in Film Studies & Philosophy from Western University and is a graduate of the Writing for Film & TV program at Vancouver Film School. Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
About the photographer
Duo Ma is the Director of Volunteer Onboarding and a photographer for AMA Toronto. Outside of AMA, she works as a Marketing and Trade Show Coordinator at Top Grade Molds. She has a Master’s in Marketing from Schulich School of Business. Her passion for photography has been a lifelong pursuit, stemming from her early years, and she takes joy in capturing cherished moments through her lens.
