#5: "You're The Conductor Of The Orchestra" | Sydney Petrovic (The Ordinary)

We had the pleasure of chatting with Sydney Petrovic who is the Global Head of Brand at The Ordinary. The Ordinary is a Canadian skincare brand that has grown into one of the hottest skincare brands in the world.🔥However, their story is far from ordinary as they’ve broken most of the rules of the beauty industry on their way to becoming a billion dollar brand. Sydney’s team of brand builders has helped to fuel this growth by developing remarkable campaigns, crafting the unique brand identity & ensuring that the brand shows up consistently in new markets. 

When she isn’t helping to scale the brand, she can be found scaling mountains such as Mount Kilimanjaro (the world’s highest freestanding mountain). 

In this episode, we chat with Sydney about how she leveraged her “student card” to land opportunities, her unique approach to planning her career, why The Ordinary doesn’t use the word “marketing” internally & the smart reason she started hosting wine clubs. 

More specifically, Sydney shared her thoughts one the following questions: 

• How would you describe what you do to a stranger? (9:54)
• What inspired you to pursue a career in marketing? (11:34)
• Can you walk us through the different chapters of your journey? (15:13) 
• How has your view on marketing evolved? (23:19) 
• What is the north star that drives your career decisions? (25:52)
• Can you speak to The Ordinary’s ethos? (30:21)
• What does your team look like? (33:43) 
• How do you think through segmenting your consumers ? (37:09) 
• How do you build a premium brand while charging such low prices? (40:59) 
• What challenges have you faced while scaling up the brand internationally? (44:00)
• Is the global strategy driven out of Canada? (46:42) 
• What are the types of skills/values that you’re looking for when recruiting for your team? (48:12) 
• Rapid fire - we put her in the hot seat! (50:35)