Dave Sanderson’s 35-year global Marketing career has been characterized by leadership assignments in highly competitive categories. His work has taken Dave to almost 30 countries to build brands for The Coca-Cola Co., TSN-The Sports Network, Motorola, CIBA Vision (contact lenses and Rx eye care) Harlequin Romances, and the advertising clients of JWT Worldwide Advertising (IBM; Tim Horton’s; CIBC; Ford; Labatt’s).

Born, raised and educated in Canada, Dave graduated from the University of Western Ontario. He spent so much of his career working outside Canada that he is now an American/Canadian ‘dual citizen’ with two passports …and the unfortunate obligation of paying taxes to both countries!

Dave was Harlequin’s first marketing / sales hire in 1975. He led Harlequin Romance to global leadership in paperback fiction, driving sales from $24 million to over $350 million while based first in Toronto, then in New York, and later in Tokyo. During those years he rolled out half a dozen foreign language editions, and helped revolutionized the paperback industry by making Harlequin Romance the world’s first book brand to distribute through supermarkets, mass merchandisers and drug store channels.

After returning from launching Harlequins in Asia, Dave joined JWT Worldwide Advertising. Unlike many in advertising, Dave’s key metric was the sales growth of his clients, not creative awards. He believes that “If it sells more stuff, then it’s creative enough. If it doesn’t, then nobody cares how creative it was.” Amazingly, this was actually a controversial concept in advertising agencies at that time, but clients loved it!

Successful growth campaigns for Dave’s advertising clients included the decade-long “Charlie Chaplin” campaign for IBM-PCs, as well as Tim Horton’s advertising during their rapid expansion of the 1980s. These successes resulted in his recruitment to become VP Marketing & Sales for TSN-The Sports Network. During his TSN years it became Canada’s most profitable cable TV network by focusing intensely and relentlessly on top line growth …pursuing fewer, bigger objectives; always a success wherever he’s tried it.

Dave joined Coca-Cola (Canada) Ltd. as VP Marketing in 1990. The challenge: Coke’s market leadership was threatened by private label “store brand” soft drinks resulting in thinner margins. Developing a winning strategy versus store brands earned him a promotion to Coke’s Atlanta headquarters, where his strategy was rolled out to each overseas market facing private label threats. Dave also helped manage many of Coke’s entertainment and sports marketing programs such as the Olympics, MLB and the NHL.

In1996 Dave accepted an Atlanta-based position as VP Marketing with CIBA Vision, a world leader in contact lenses. By year two, CV had jumped ahead of Bausch & Lomb into second place while increasing sales +17%, improving market share by more than 3 points and growing EBITA by +21%.

In 2000 Dave joined Motorola in suburban Chicago as Global Brand Director leading a $1B segment of their cell phone business. Motorola had fallen behind the technology curve and had ceded cellular leadership to Nokia. Motorola was developing technologies favored by their engineers instead of those demanded by customers. Dave was able to lead his global teams in developing and launching three new cell phone models that were all profitable best-sellers in their segments.

Near the end of his career Dave took his extensive global experience to a 25-year old marketing consultancy, The Hazelton Group, as Vice President, leading their Chicago office. He directed the implementation of brand innovation projects for Campbell Soup, Ford, American Express, TD-Waterhouse and Comcast Cable.

Dave retired from corporate life in mid-2005 and returned to Canada to enjoy writing, serving his private consulting clients, and training the next generation of world-class marketers at Barrie’s Georgian College. In recent years Dave has consulted for consumer products, services, and B2B clients in Canada as well as in Illinois, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina and California.

Dave has been married to his wife Susan for 35 years. Their two grown children live in Chicago (son Jeff and his wife Piper) and Raleigh, NC (daughter Jennifer and her husband Morgan). Dave and Sue excitedly await their first grandchild, expected in Raleigh, NC, in February 2011.