Profile - Gwyn Burr: The woman who showed mums how to feed a family for a fiver

At our meeting at Sainsbury's London head office, she walks in wearing the same Sainsbury's purple and orange fleece that the cashiers wear and she's also sporting a "Gwyn" name badge to complete the look. Forget power dressing and high-maintenance hair, this is a woman who doesn't need any sartorial help to be taken seriously.

Born in Rotherham ("the right side of the Pennines", she assures me), Burr is a Yorkshire lass through and through. She even has 16 years at Leeds-based Asda under her belt to prove it.

Burr was one of a number of ex-Asda high achievers to be drafted in by Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King when he took over the top role in 2004.

At that time, Sainsbury's was malingering, having lost its way in an increasingly cut-throat supermarket sector.

But six years on, Sainsbury's is outperforming all three of its main rivals – Tesco, Asda and Bradford-based Morrisons – thanks to the turnaround produced by King and his ex-Asda colleagues.

Much of the credit is down to Burr. She's the one who introduced highly successful campaigns such as Switch & Save, Feed Your Family For a Fiver and Make the Most of Your Leftovers.

As soon as customers started to feel the pinch, Burr spearheaded Sainsbury's move to help them cut back on spending without sacrificing quality.

"In autumn 2008, we were facing a downturn and people were really concerned about how it would affect their families and their ability to feed them healthy food," she says.

"We showed them how they could feed a family of four for 5. The average takeaway is 17, so this was cheaper and healthier. We got great feedback from customers and gave away 85m

tip cards."

Asked what defines a Sainsbury's shopper, Burr insists the retailer has universal customer appeal and anyone can shop there regardless of their budget.

But surely Sainsbury's is for affluent Southerners?

"We don't see ourselves as budget or upmarket," she

tells me firmly. "We have three tiers of ranges – 'Taste the Difference', our core range and 'Basics'. Everyone can shop with us."

The company is also keen to shrug off its Southern associations and is planning a major push into the North. The retailer has identified Yorkshire as a key target area for expansion and is currently sizing up a number of sites.

Recent store openings include York, which opened in September, and Sheffield and Haxby, in North Yorkshire, which opened this month.

While the retailer has a 20 per cent market share in the South, it has just an 11.3 per cent share of the Yorkshire market. But around 75 per cent of Sainsbury's new supermarkets will open in the North and West, creating thousands of jobs in Yorkshire.

"Sainsbury's translates very well in the North," says Burr. "Customers are taking to the stores very well. We were a Southern-based London business, but we have a great opportunity to expand the business further and further out."

Burr, who has retained her Yorkshire accent, says she feels very at home at Sainsbury's.

"It's a fantastic business," she says. "I've come from a Northern retailer (Asda) and you might think it's all very different in the South, but that's not the case. Lots of different people work at Sainsbury's."

That said, there is a lot of good-natured banter between the Northerners and Southerners in the group's open-plan offices.

"A lot of people don't think we have electricity and we tell them they're just soft Southerners," she says.

Burr was appointed customer service and colleague director in June after King designed the role specially for her.

Prior to that, she was marketing director, a job that brought her into close contact with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who has been associated with Sainsbury's for the past 10 years.

So what's Oliver really like?

"I've worked very closely with Jamie and the great thing is that our views around quality food are closely aligned," she says. "He is a very genuine, straightforward guy, he's very true to himself.

"Our customers recognise that integrity and honesty. His tie-up with Sainsbury's is the longest celebrity endorsement in the UK."

While Burr says there isn't a typical Sainsbury's shopper, the one issue that unites customers

is ethical sourcing.

Earlier this year, Sainsbury's was named the world's biggest retailer of Fairtrade products, which guarantee farmers better prices and decent working conditions.

"Fairtrade and RSPCA-approved meat are vital to our customers," she says. "Ethical sourcing runs through the organisation like DNA. We are very proud of our Fairtrade heritage. We are passionate about the role we play in the communities we touch.

"Our customers tell us it's important to them and we should keep doing it. One of the ways a Sainsbury's shopper is different is they really care about the sourcing of products."

Now 47, Burr has worked in retail for the past 25 years.After graduating from Bradford University with a degree in Economics and History, she entered Rowntree Mackintosh's graduate trainee programme. Within 18 months, she was promoted to European marketing manager.

In 1988, then with two very young children, she was one of the few women to join Archie Norman's dynamic young team at Asda, which turned the company from an ailing retailer into a brand worth 6.7bn.

Burr was responsible for creating Asda's own label ranges under Norman's high-profile replacement, Allan Leighton.

When Asda was sold to Wal-Mart, in 1999, she became retail managing director (North) with responsibility for more than 14,000 staff and an annual turnover of 1.5bn.

Two years later, she left Asda

to set up a marketing company, The Resultant Team, with Leighton, which counted Sainsbury's, BHS and the RAC among its clients.

Sainsbury's asked Burr to do some customer service work for them, and when King joined as chief executive in 2004, he persuaded her to come on board full time.

"I felt the opportunities at Sainsbury's were so exciting," she says. "It was the start of the retail turnaround journey."

Burr now lives with her husband, Nick, in Ilkley and commutes to Sainsbury's head office, in Holborn, London, first thing every Monday.

Towards the end of our interview, I ask Burr if there's anything important we haven't talked about. She says no and starts quizzing me about the Yorkshire Post, but Sainsbury's head of PR, Mark Rigby, drily points out that she hasn't mentioned any of her recent awards.

Burr isn't the sort to sound her own trumpet, but over the past two years she has won an impressive amount of silverware – Specsavers Woman of the Year 2009, Number 2 in Marketing magazine's 2010 Power 100, and last month she was named as one of Europe's top 20 female executives at the inaugural ESM European Businesswoman of the Year Awards.

Also last month she was named as chief marketing officer of the Year 2010 by global management consulting firm Booz & Company for "outstanding marketing services that play a crucial role in overall business success".

"It's nice to be recognised," she says modestly.

The grocery sector has lagged other retailers in the lack of women in the top position, but I suspect Burr could be the one to change that.

GWYN BURR

FACT FILE

Title: Customer Service and Colleague Director

Date of birth: 12.1.63

Place of birth: Rotherham

Education: University of Bradford

First job: Production manager, Rowntree's in York

Favourite music: Opera, particularly Puccini

Car driven: Range Rover

Favourite film: It's a Wonderful Life

Favourite holiday destination: Italy, particularly the Italian Lakes

Last book read: An Italian Education by Tim Parks

What I am most proud of: The work I've done around the Sainsbury's brand