About Sam

To write a seminar but especially a book is an unexpected achievement considering the strug¬gle I have had with the written word. 

Eairly On  .......   

My first memories of school in the 1960s are not wonderful; having undiagnosed serious dyslexia did not set me up for a happy time with the primary school nuns. At secondary school I have vivid memories of a book called “Planned Analysis.” Many nights for homework, we were assigned a new section of English grammar to learn from this horrible little book. The following morning, everyone in the class was asked one question like “Where is the subjective clause?” If you got the answer wrong, you were asked to stand at the back of the classroom and wait while all the other pris¬oners were interrogated. Anyone standing was strapped. I don’t recall getting many questions right back then. What I do recall is being on the bus ride to school steeling myself for the inevitable. I went to school most mornings knowing I was going to be hit.

Violence and learning were not in my case highly correlated.   

There was only one way forward. At about fifteen-years-old, I decided anything I couldn’t do was just unimportant. I was not going to let a little negativity get to me. The alternative was to accept seri¬ous failure and forget any of my aspirations. I focused on my strengths, spelling and written communication were just not on the list. 

Working for Big Companies  

I made it into Uni, just.

University was a godsend. I could use a calculator. Math was now something I could do and do well. I understood the concepts, just could not seem to add up, the calculator was a salvation, maths worked now. My mother corrected the spelling in my essays. I passed; in fact, I excelled at some subjects receiving commendation letters.

While at uni, I worked in my family’s hotels. I was introduced to life outside school by the Matraville Hotel and the heroes of the South Sydney football team who drank in the public bar and lived in the aboriginal community close by. I learned a lot about what makes peo¬ple tick, their motivations and mateship while pulling beer. These les¬sons stood me in great stead when, later in life, I was asked to make marketing value judgments. No university marketing course can teach these lessons in human behaviour.

I am sure those who called me “speller” at school have been quietly shocked to see my career unfold. They would never have expected me to become responsible for the sales and statistical analysis for The Coca-Cola Company in Australia, or later to be responsible at differ¬ent times for the marketing functions at Coca-Cola Australia, Coca-Cola Far East, McDonald’s Australia, and Nestle Rowntree UK, spending many $100s of millions via their communication budgets.

More recently    

As a marketing and sales Consultant for the past 10 years I have been involved in some fun project and inovations.

1 Key Customer Performance Audit analysis and reporting for The MAC amongst BMA, Vale, Macarthur Coal, EDI Downer

2 Third party sales and distribution analysis for Nestle Peters measuring customer service, market share and retail outlet merchandising standards

3 Developed and tested new sales channels and go to market strategies for Sanitarium UP and GO

4 Jim Beam Global in outlet distribution analysis merchandising and availability research  

5 World Youth Day  created and executed the strategy that delivered 1.3 million pilgrim meals in 3 days at the lowest cost relying on 8 key supplier relationships

6 Created a new sales promotional mechanic using unique codes to evidence consumer loyalty, for Kit Kat in UK, now used by Coke, Nokia and others  

7 For Nestle UK commercialised Kit Kat Low Carb variant in 7 weeks to take full advantage of the UK market opportunity.

8 The conceptualisation of introduction of Beam Global and CCA into a vibrant joint venture capitalising on the CCA production and distribution strength and the Beam Global Brands.