The legend of Sandy Gordon
Alexander (known as Sandy) Grant Gordon sadly passed away just a few weeks ago on 21st December 2020. If the name’s not familiar to you, he was one of the most important family owners and directors of William Grant & Sons, makers of Glenfiddich, The Balvenie, Hendrick’s among many others, of the modern era.
Purple have worked for and with William Grant & Sons for 13 years this year. And as a writer, it’s my job to research many brand histories and stories, so his name crops up a lot in the family archives! I also had the great pleasure and privilege of meeting Sandy on a few occasions. I found him to be humble and softly spoken, curious about everything and a deeply inspiring man.
Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit about Sandy and his life, telling the stories of how and why Glenfiddich single malt and Grant’s blended whisky became the brands they did under his stewardship. I thought it would be interesting to blend these many stories together in one place – hopefully to give a real sense of the man and whisky legend he was.
Sandy was born in Glasgow on 6th May 1931, the son of inspirational Chairman Grant Gordon, almost four years after his brother Charles. He grew up in Bearsden, a suburb of Glasgow (with a year’s stint in Dufftown during the war), before going to Rugby School and then to Cambridge University, where he got a double first in maths and law, the highest grade you can get.
Charles and his brother Sandy both went on to have a profound impact on the future success and sales of Grant’s whisky yet they couldn’t have been more different. Sandy got a double first at university, whereas Charles was conscripted to the Merchant Navy and trained for Operation Downfall. Sandy was quieter and more thoughtful, whereas Charles said everything on his mind. Sandy was more reserved and reliable whereas Charles was more impetuous and unpredictable. Sandy liked being in his office in Scotland whereas Charles thrived when he was ‘on the road’ in North or South America. Sandy was more studious whereas Charles was more of a natural salesman. They were the perfect blend of personalities, opposite yet complementary. This was proven beyond doubt when their father suddenly died in 1953, aged just fifty-nine, leaving his sons at the heart of the business. Not people to shy away from responsibility however, Charles and Sandy grabbed the bull by the horns and set about revolutionising Grant’s.
In 1963, Sandy Gordon pioneered the single malt whisky category by actively marketing our Glenfiddich whisky outside Scotland, something no other distiller had ever done before. Up until then, single malts were a well-kept secret, drunk only by locals in the know. But Sandy, director at the time and great grandson of our founder, was so proud of our malt and so sure it would be loved by whisky drinkers worldwide that he began promoting it as the great whisky he knew it was. And just look at the category now!
Sandy seemed to have an instinctive knack for marketing, understanding how to talk to and excite our consumers, while pushing the uniqueness of our blend. At the end of the 1960s and all through the 1970s, there followed a series of remarkable advertising promotions, all a product of what Sandy called “disciplined creativity”, of thinking up truly imaginative campaigns but which had an eye on our business objective of increasing sales.
Without the big budgets of our competitors, Sandy had to be cleverer. In 1968, he instigated a poster campaign in Clydeside and in Merseyside, two areas where Grant’s was strong, rather than go national (Sandy called it, “firing with a rifle instead of a shotgun”).
A particularly memorable promotion for Sandy was when Grant’s teamed up with Baxters of Speyside, a local food producer of luxuries like pheasant paté. Consumers could buy a bottle of Grant’s and send off for a half-price Baxters Picnic Hamper. Baxters banked on getting around 3,000 redemptions but started panicking when they hit the final figure of 12,000 (“there weren’t enough pheasant pluckers in Fochabers!” was how Sandy wrote it on a PR release!).
Like his great grandfather, Sandy was a man of rare foresight and ingenuity, always overcoming whatever business problems or obstacles placed in his way. Perhaps in public recognition of his role, he was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List in 1988. He was also the Scotch Whisky Association’s longest serving council member from 1968 to 1995 and was given a Lifetime Achievement Award from the IWSC (International Wine & Spirit Competition) in 2000.
And what better way to end, than on one of my favourite Sandy quotes…
“We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before… and those to come will stand on ours” — Sandy Grant Gordon
By Jamie Fleming