A successful marketer with international connections who could have lived anywhere in Canada chose the Comox Valley.
A former director of marketing for the Vancouver Sun, Sandra Hamilton was working out of Pender Island when she and her cabinet-making husband decided their two young children needed broader exposure to the rest of the world.
“We could have moved anywhere,” Hamilton said in an interview, recalling she and her husband “laid out the whole country” looking for a new home.
“If you want to sit on a beach and have skiing within 40 minutes, this is the place to be,” she said of her current home.
“I moved up to Comox to give my kids more of an urban, metropolitan experience,” chuckles the Kye Bay resident of two years, reasoning the Comox Valley was more urban than Pender Harbour.
Hamilton flies to Vancouver twice a week, but keeps coming back to the Comox Valley and her family.
Living in an actual metropolis such as Vancouver is not an option for Hamilton, who said, “People hire me for my ideas. My best ideas come from nature. I can’t live in a city.
“My best marketing ideas come when I’m walking on the beach in Kye Bay.”
Those ideas include the Pacific Kiss campaign, which has elevated the profile of shellfish farmed in Baynes Sound to international heights.
Hired by the Comox-based B.C. Shellfish Growers’ Association only three months before the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics, Hamilton whipped up a professional presentation extolling the BCSGA’s briny products.
On one day in the Olympic media centre, Hamilton said she gave more than 50 interviews.
“The media from all over the world went home with my business card,” she said, adding that many of them called her for comment about the effect on aquatic life of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Using her many connections and the power of the Internet, Hamilton works out of her home as a senior partner for the Twentyten Group.
Since November, she has worked with what she describes as “a legacy company that consists of alumni from the celebrated Vancouver 2010 award-winning marketing team.”
Beside Hamilton, it’s led by Andrea Shaw, former vice-president of VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games); and Bill Cooper, director of commercial rights management.
Continuing with the Olympic theme, Hamilton has been the business manager since May for former VANOC CEO John Furlong.
Like a good marketer, Hamilton sang Furlong’s praises during an interview that was substantially about her and her work.
“It’s an honour to work with him,” stated Hamilton, who said that as his business manager she protects the reputation and brand of “a very intense, highly-driven man.”
Hamilton is promoting Patriot Hearts, Furlong’s new book of Olympic retrospection that is being officially launched today.
She’s already fashioning a post-Olympic career for the silver-tongued Irishman and former Canadian squash champion as a motivational speaker.
“John is a gifted storyteller,” she said of the former municipal recreation employee in Prince George and Nanaimo.
While in Nanaimo, she recalled, he promoted a title fight featuring local boxer Gord Racette as well as concerts by the Beach Boys, Glen Campbell and others, all to raise money for what is now the Beban Park recreation complex.
That’s the kind of thing that appeals to Hamilton.
“Economic development is really what drives my marketing. I don’t market widgets. I market things that will impact people’s lives. Is it about improving people’s way of life?”
Hamilton said one local businessman has requested a motivational speech by Furlong at the Sid Williams Theatre. She would like to do more work with local people, including the BCSGA, which she says produces “the best quality of oysters in the world.”
To help her have “an incredible opportunity to connect the Comox Valley to the world,” Hamilton uses ABC Printing in Courtenay and Array Studios in Nanaimo as much as possible.
Stellar Bay Shellfish in Deep Bay is one Twentyten Group client benefiting from its global relationships, she said.
For more information, visit www.tentytengroup.com or www.JohnFurlong.ca.
editor@comoxvalleyrecord.com
