Severine Vauleon has spent her career bringing people together to leave things better than they found them. Talking to Severine, her assured presence makes it clear that she rarely sees positive change as the achievement of one person.
Whether it is helping a team unlock an idea, mentoring a younger marketer, or creating a brand story that moves someone and makes them think, what obviously lights Severine up is the moment people gather around an idea and make something happen together.
Now Chief Marketing Officer of Inspired Pet Nutrition, after many years in global brand leadership at Unilever, Severine brings sensitivity and warm authority to her work. She listens closely, but is difficult to move once the evidence is clear and an idea has earned her conviction. Over time, she has learned that ideas also need allies, people willing to strengthen them and stand behind them.
One of the clearest examples began with Close Up, an oral care brand built around bringing people closer. Yet when Severine took the helm, its advertising showed a narrow version of who those people might be. The conventionally attractive, heterosexual couples on screen reflected only a small part of the world around them.
“When I’m in the flow with other people, that’s when I feel most myself.”
Severine and her team reframed the brand around Freedom to Love, portraying couples across cultures, religions, castes and sexual orientations. Bringing the idea into socially and religiously conservative contexts across the Philippines, India, Brazil and Nigeria required cultural humility as much as courage.
Having worked across countries and continents, Severine was alert to the assumptions she carried with her. “You must not commit cultural imperialism,” was a principle she lived by.
The team researched how young people in each country understood love and choice. Many wanted greater freedom in their relationships than the societies around them allowed. The findings gave the team confidence to proceed, while keeping the work grounded in what people had told them.
Before the campaign launched in the Philippines, the local business extended equal benefits to same-sex and heterosexual couples, aligning its own policies with the values the brand was putting into the world.
Religious organisations objected. In India, where the campaign depicted inter-caste and Hindu–Muslim relationships, the backlash intensified, sending, in Severine’s words, “Twitter on freaking fire”. There were boycott calls and pressure to withdraw the work.
With support from leadership, her response was controlled: “Keep calm. Monitor, analyse.”
The team identified considerable bot activity behind the outrage and adjusted its media plan. Broader sentiment remained positive and the campaign stayed live.
“It’s in difficult moments that things either fall apart or come together,” she says. “In this case, it really brought the team together.”
Severine still becomes emotional when she remembers one response to the campaign in the Philippines:
“When a brand understands you better than your own family.”
The comment captured what attentive storytelling can achieve, helping someone feel seen in a part of their life that may otherwise go unrecognised.
That commitment to who is seen is extended behind the camera, too.
While working on Lux, Severine helped create the Female Gaze programme with colleagues and agency partners. It began with a striking imbalance. Women were the primary audience for beauty advertising, yet much of the work created for them was still being shaped predominantly by men.
For Severine, women needed a greater voice in how those stories were told. Their lived experience could surface insights, nuances and expressions of beauty that others might overlook.
The team deliberately sought female directors, directors of photography and other creative talent. The advertising subsequently performed better in testing and in markets. Yet bringing women into the process was only part of the challenge. They also needed visibility that could lead to further opportunities.
When Anna Shatilova approached her with the idea for HerMark, Severine recognised a continuation of that work, another way to bring women behind the stories into view.
“There’s been progress for sure, but still not enough. And it still needs that deliberate push. Let’s shine a light on these women who are always in the shadows, doing great work, not being celebrated and not being seen.”
Women still find themselves interrupted, dismissed or spoken over, and Severine’s advice is characteristically direct. “When people cut you out or don’t want to listen to you or talk over you, don’t give up. Just come back and repeat and try again.”
Yet perseverance should never mean doing everything alone. This is a lesson Severine says she learned later in her career: individual determination becomes more powerful when other people are prepared to amplify it.
“Don’t think they’re bad ideas. Don’t think that you can’t make it happen. Find your sponsors, find your allies and then continue pushing.”
Her belief in collective action extends beyond her professional life. Through Women on a Mission, she has taken part in demanding expeditions, raising funds for women affected by war and violence. The expeditions she joined have raised approximately $200,000.
Across Severine’s life, the pattern repeats. What she celebrates is collective effort: women choosing a difficult undertaking, relying on one another and directing what they accomplish towards people far beyond themselves.
When asked to imagine her mark, Severine chooses a woven thread.
“My mark would be a woven thread. A thread that connects, so different strands weave together.”
For her, the image represents the skills and perspectives people carry into a project, and what becomes possible when those strands meet. Each retains its own character. Together, they create strength, movement and form.
It is a fitting mark for someone who has learned that conviction may start an idea, but people carry it forward. Thread by thread.
HerMark is a visual and narrative study of women shaping the marketing, advertising, and communications industry. Branding in Asia is publishing the ongoing series in partnership with HerMark. Learn more at hermark.world
