Gwyn Burr, Customer Service and Colleague Director at Sainsbury’s, named Chief Marketing Officer of the Year 2010

by Thomas Knorpp - 12/10/2010

"Sainsbury’s is the UK’s third largest supermarket chain, trading from over 800 stores. "

Sainsbury’s performance over the past four years has been underpinned by the enormous changes made during the ‘Making Sainsbury’s Great Again’ turnaround programme.

Sainsbury’s is now a stronger business having delivered four consecutive years of like-for-like sales growth and the company continues to build on this strong foundation.

Gwyn Burr is one of the most influential women in British retail today, with a direct impact on the buying habits of 19 million people a week. Gwyn’s combination of customer focus, intuition, passion and entrepreneurial spirit enabled her to innovate at Sainsbury’s at a very fast pace. Her energy and enthusiasm are boundless, infectious for those around her, and crucial in bringing each new idea to life.

It is notoriously difficult to turn around a company the size of Sainsbury’s and – crucially – to take more than 150,000 colleagues with you on a journey of change. Nevertheless, as Customer Director, Gwyn played a pivotal role during Sainsbury’s turnaround and has been directly responsible for increasing the number of Sainsbury’s customers from 13 million to over 19 million each week, attracting a remarkable more than one million new shoppers to the business every year since her arrival.

Soon after her arrival at Sainsbury’s, Gwyn Burr identified and implemented five key principles which now represent Sainsbury’s business-as-usual philosophy:
•        Be the best for food and health
•        Source with integrity
•        Have respect for our environment
•        Make a positive difference to our community
•        Be a great place to work

Gwyn has used innovative, inspirational thinking and strong leadership to bed in these values firmly across our business to create real and lasting attitudinal change.

She has recorded a number of key industry ‘firsts’ within Sainsbury’s retail operations. For example, under Gwyn Sainsbury’s became:
•        The first big retailer, and only major UK supermarket, to stop selling eggs from caged hens.
•        The UK’s largest retailer of Fairtrade goods by value.
•        The first major supermarket chain to introduce the ‘bag for life’.
•        The first major UK supermarket to set a date for the removal of hydrogenated vegetable oils (HVOs) from its entire range of own brand food and drink.
•        The first retailer to implement the Department of Health's voluntary guidelines on the labelling of alcohol.
•        The first supermarket chain to introduce People Powered checkouts, using ingenious ‘kinetic car park plates’ (see right).
•        Number 1 out of 59 global retailers in the World Wildlife Fund Sustainable Palm Oil Buyers Scorecard.
•        The leading retailer in the Marine Conservation Society retailer survey on tackling overfishing.

She also introduced:
•        ‘Make the Difference' days to help and encourage customers and colleagues to take simple steps to change their behaviour in a positive way. Gwyn’s first Make the Difference day launched the iconic reusable ‘I’m not a plastic bag’ designed by Anya Hindmarch (see right) in conjunction with the organisation ‘We Are What We Do’. Since then we have reduced the number of single use bags by 58% and reward the re-use of bags with extra Nectar points.
•        An award winning zero food waste to landfill initiative.
•        Electric car charging points at 11 Sainsbury’s sites across London.

Gwyn has also focused on children’s health, spearheading campaigns to increase activity in schools and promote healthier eating habits amongst kids:
•        Over 80% of UK schools are now signed up to Sainsbury’s ‘Active kids’ campaign after successful promotion through all available channels – including ‘X Factor’! .
•        To date, Sainsbury’s has donated over £86 million in sports equipment and experiences to 40,000 schools across the UK.
•        Over 13,000 schools are signed up to our ‘Active Kids Get Cooking’ initiative, and over 500,000 children took part in the scheme’s launch
•        Supporting English Schools Football Association

Gwyn was also instrumental in driving Sainsbury’ commitment to national charities and to supporting local causes in the communities where we trade:
•        In 2009 our customers and colleagues raised £11 million for Comic Relief and Sport Relief.
•        Profit from sales of our Bags for Life is invested back into local communities.

With a seat on Sainsbury’s Operating Board since 2005, Gwyn Burr’s unique role has been focused on keeping the customer at the heart of everything the business does; from Advertising, Marketing, Own Brand, Public Relations, Internal Communications, Corporate Responsibility, Events, Insights, Store Design, Space Management and Customer Service.

One of very few women to reach such a senior level in a leading FTSE 100 company, Gwyn remit has been unusually wide, encompassing the entire customer experience.

Her approach to business is one of relentless improvement – by continuously examining consumers’ purchasing habits, listening to what customers want, and anticipating what they might want in the future. As Gwyn explained in a recent article: ‘We are a very fast-paced industry, customers tell us what they want and it’s up to us to deliver. I have an overview across everything, so I can link in my own mind aspects of the proposition to make sure we move fast, understand the customer implicitly, and translate that into action.’

Her innovations encompass a variety of important issues such as animal welfare, reducing carbon footprint, improving the diet of the nation and its children and supporting Fairtrade. In each area Sainsbury’s has been recognised as a leader in the sector.

Since joining Sainsbury’s, Gwyn has introduced a wave of creative initiatives that have invigorated our brand and cemented our reputation as a forward-thinking, innovative retailer. These include:
•        Re- branding the business with “Try Something New Today” which re- energised customers’ and colleagues’ view of the Brand.
•        Re-launching our standard own brand range in September 2008, which now accounts for over 40 per cent of sales.
•        Launching four major initiatives designed to save customers money, long before the recession forced a knee-jerk reaction from other retailers:
1.        The ‘basics’ range: launched in 2006, this range conforms to all our brand values and over 70% of customers now buy into it.
2.        ‘Shop and Save’: provides customers with competitive pricing and a range of promotions.
3.        ‘Switch and Save’: highlights the quality and value of Sainsbury’s own-brand products at significantly lower prices than equivalent leading brands and
4.        ‘Cook and Save’: helps customers make their household budgets stretch further with initiatives such as ‘Feed your Family for a Fiver’ and ‘Love your Leftovers’.
•        A number of health related innovations:
1.        We were the first retailer to use simple ‘traffic light’ labelling on food packaging. Designed to inform customers, it often leads them to make healthier choices.
2.        Active Kids and Active Kids Get Cooking.
3.         The ‘Be Good to Yourself’ range with reduced fat and salt.
4.        The Apple stamp to help customers identify healthier products.
5.        Children’s GDAs on the back of packs.
6.        Recipe tip cards launched in 2005 – these have proved extremely popular with 573 different recipes published.

More Details: http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk