Sandra Sanderson flips the script at Sobeys

Part of our annual Marketers of the Year feature, this profile of Sobeys’ head marketer looked at how she had led sweeping changes across the company, from new visual identities across banners to restructuring marketing teams to bolstering its marketing tech capabilities.

(Also, be sure to keep an eye out for our next Marketers of the Year in the Winter 2023 issue of strategy, which will be on newsstands the first week of January).

GoodLife Fitness names new VP of marketing

GoodLife Fitness is tapped a marketer from the food world to help lead its marketing and continue its post-pandemic recovery. New VP of marketing Nicole Pekerman came to the health club brand in May after stints at the likes of Tim Hortons and Weston Foods

Peckerman started her stint off strong. In September, she picked a new creative AOR for GoodLife, which then launched a new campaign and brand platform the following month.

Will consumers side with Frito-Lay or Loblaw?

In February, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division stopped shipments of its products to Loblaw stores after the grocery giant refused to accept price increases the CPG made to brands like Lay’s and Doritos to cover rising costs of ingredients.

Disputes between retailers and suppliers are nothing new, but this one caught the public’s attention due to the absence of otherwise highly visible brands from store shelves, as well as touching on cost of living issues that were about to become even more of a factor in their lives.

Experts strategy spoke to said public perception could break either way. On the one hand, a grocery store working to keep prices low is something that seems like it would go over well with customers. However, Loblaw trying to portray itself as a hero in the minds of Canadians was not likely to stand up to scrutiny – even though things like the bread price fixing scandal and ending pandemic “hero pay” are in the rear-view mirror, they still showed consumers are increasingly aware of the business practices and revenues at Canada’s biggest companies, the latter of which continued to rise this year alongside the cost of food.

The two sides eventually settled their dispute in April.

Tim Hortons’ app ruled to have violated privacy laws

In June, a joint investigation by four Canadian privacy regulators found that the way Tim Hortons’ mobile app tracked and recorded its users’ locations to be in violation of Canadian privacy laws. That came following a nearly two-year investigation that started after National Post reporter James McLeod published a story where found his location had been recorded more than 2,700 times in less than five months – including when he wasn’t using the app, which was contrary to what the company said would happen on its own website.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) – working in collaboration with privacy commissions in Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia – found that users had their movements tracked and recorded “every few minutes of every day” and the app “misled many users to believe information would only be accessed when the app was in use.” The data was used to infer where users lived and worked, as well as if they were travelling away from either of those locations. It also generated and tracked “events” that were unrelated to their Tim Hortons purchases, including when they entered or left a Tim Hortons competitor or a sports venue.

In addition to Tim Hortons, the investigation was meant to send “a strong message” to other organizations that they “can’t spy on customers just because it fits in your marketing strategy.” In response to the findings, Tim Hortons said it had begun working implementing recommendations from the commissions, though several changes had already been made when the investigation was first launched in 2020.

Kraft Heinz builds a coffee brand around its teddy bears

Kraft’s “peanut butter bears” have been expanding their horizons. After becoming the face of the brand’s hazelnut spread to compete with the likes of Nutella in 2020, the company used its mascots to help it launch a new product in another breakfast occassion: coffee.

The Kraft Café Barista line is meant to complement Kraft Heinz’s Maxwell House and Ethical Bean coffee brands. In a premium segment of the category that typically markets around features and benefits, the hope was that the bears would bring more of an emotional connection for consumers, in addition to simple recognizability.