She’s an international woman of marketing.

Veronique Hamel’s experience overseeing brands in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the U.S. and Canada certainly explains her motto, ‘think globally, act locally.’ Now Mississauga, Ont.-based Church & Dwight Canada’s director of marketing and development, Hamel, 45, is constantly looking at other markets, gauging possibly transposable trends and hunting for best practice models to apply to her roster of 30 products, including such prominent brands as Trojan, Nair, Arm & Hammer and the recently acquired Crest Spin Brush Pro.

Perhaps this is most obvious through her pivotal role in the high-profile North American launch of Elexa, a new line of ‘sexual well-being’ products like condoms and freshening cloths aimed at women.

‘She’s impacting the entire organization, not just Canada,’ notes her American counterpart, Jim Daniels, Church & Dwight’s U.S. director of marketing. ‘In terms of marketing in the sexual health realm, she has provided great insights – from packaging to communications to advertising.’ Daniels says Hamel’s French background – she’s from Paris – helped her grasp and articulate the certain je ne sais quoi the company was looking for. ‘We were trying to project a certain level of sophistication – a female confidence that wasn’t brazen. There was a lot of French influence.’ Even when it came to naming the product, Hamel was instrumental: She was adamant that it be easy to pronounce in English and French. While American marketers are well aware of their own sizeable Latino population, appealing to French Canadians isn’t high on their radar, she says.

After the product line itself was conceived, Hamel focused on adapting the launch campaign to the Canadian market. She leveraged Health Canada statistics about the rise in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among young people, and worked with her PR agency, Toronto-based Veritas, to build the Canadian event of Elexa around the stats to make it newsworthy. The lavish Toronto media launch featured prominent Canadian sex columnist Josey Vogels talking about the importance of sexual health products like the Elexa line, and resulted in plenty of news coverage, including mentions in Elle Canada and the Toronto Sun.

What really made the Canadian launch unique was Hamel’s ability to get retailers like Shoppers Drug Mart and Pharma Plus to agree to carry the Elexa line in feminine care aisles, rather than traditional condom sections. This move was based on the insight that many women feel uncomfortable being seen browsing in the condom aisle. She was able to win over retailers by presenting Health Canada stats, including one indicating that less than half of women 20-24 used condoms regularly – a number that demonstrated a potentially untapped market. While unable to share numbers, Hamel says the Elexa launch has been an undeniable success.

It was as deputy GM at Scholl PLC, based out of the Paris office and reporting directly to the Italy-based CEO, that Hamel learned how to really maximize her relationships with retailers. She made sure to fully understand each retailer’s equity to best leverage it, and adapted programs to meet and anticipate shoppers’ needs. It was also during this

10-year stint at Scholl, where she oversaw sales and marketing for France, Belgium and the Netherlands and was project leader for launching new products, that she developed her passion for the latter. While there, she launched dozens of new products, including medicated pads for corns, athlete’s foot remedies and a women’s hosiery line.

But it was at her next post as GM consumer packaged goods at Paris-based Church & Dwight division Carter Wallace that she executed a product introduction that to this day she credits as one of her proudest career achievements. She noticed the success of the Nair brand in North America and launched it in France in the early ’90s, supported by a TV campaign and a large media event. ‘I had to find new pockets of growth,’ she explains. ‘At that time, Veet was very popular.’ Nair was able to wrestle a significant amount of market share away from Veet, and it is still thriving in France today as the category’s number-two brand.

In 1999, when Hamel moved to Montreal (for personal reasons), she showed the same resourcefulness. ‘All the experience I had from before was totally transferable from one continent to another,’ she says. As VP sales and marketing for Canada and the U.S. at cosmetics firm Prestilux, she oversaw such prestigious brands as Gucci, Anna Sui and ROC. Here too, along with creating an internal retail division in the U.S. to boost retail sales of spa skincare brands, she was instrumental in launching a new ROC offshoot, a slimming product. ‘That category is very developed in Europe. I saw that in Canada, no such product existed,’ she explains, adding that retailers were hesitant to carry it at first, but she was able to win them over by presenting European and consumer trends. The launch was a success, and even helped carve out a new segment in the Canadian skin care market: L’Oréal Canada has just launched a competing product.

All this experience has come in handy at Church & Dwight, where, since assuming her current role in 2004, Hamel has already overseen several new product debuts, including an Arm & Hammer deodorizing pet care line and offshoots of the Nair and Rub A535 brands. Last year, she also introduced a new campaign for the latter, helping it retain its number-one position against the newly competitive Lakota.

In many cases, like with ROC, she has looked to other markets for new business opportunities. ‘I’ve found her very willing to take the best ideas from around the world,’ notes Tim Herbert, partner and VP, client services at Toronto-based agency Allard Johnson. ‘Nair [in Canada] had a very successful year in 2005 – that was the result of Veronique looking at international work…. We picked up the best ideas, and added a bit of our own.’

Hamel looked to France, which is now the leading market for Nair. ‘[France] had launched technically superior wax products,’ she explains. ‘I saw that the wax segment in Canada was under-developed – it was a unique opportunity.’ So, last year saw the launch of no-strip and roll-on waxes, supported by a campaign inspired by the simple ambience of the French Nair ads. And, Hamel’s not done. In April, she’ll be rolling out Nair Pretty, a new segment of depilatories aimed at teens. ‘[Hamel] likes to move forward quickly and get things done – you have to when you have such a big portfolio,’ notes Herbert.

This spring, Hamel will also oversee the launch of more Arm & Hammer pet care products. ‘We’re extending our business in the pet segment beyond litter. The pet market is growing, and Canada is leading the way,’ she says. ‘Retailers see this, and are expanding pet sections.’ On top of that, she’ll also revamp the Scrub Free line and launch new TV campaigns for Arm & Hammer baking soda and the Crest Spin Brush Pro.

With so many initiatives up her sleeve, it’s easy to wonder how Hamel does it. She credits her large team of marketing managers and external partners, and cites another one of her business mantras: ‘Don’t dilute your energies – build a team.’

FIVE QUESTIONS

Favourite movie:

Chocolat. I love tales that are bigger than life. The theme resonates with me: a pure celebration of pleasures, but it also depicts that traditions, even though appealing, can mean rigidity and prison for the mind and the community.

Favourite Web site:

My family Web site! Most of my family is in Europe, and most of my friends are across the world. This is where we all gather, exchange and laugh.

Last ad that inspired you to make a purchase:

Dove. If they share my values, then I can trust their products. But ads are not the only thing that make me purchase: Design is very often what drives my impulse.

Favourite vacation spot:

Bodrum, Turkey. Magical scenery, lovely beaches and intense nightlife, but also an outstanding base camp for visiting amazing archeological and geographical sites. It’s at the crossing of two continents, and therefore rich with eastern and western influences.

Greatest strength:

Passion for life and pride for building. Everything is worth building: a business, a brand, but also a family, a house, musical skills, etc. Passion for life not only gives me a solid drive, but it makes me genuinely interested in people – the way they think, the way they live, what makes them move forward.