L'Oreal Business Competition Brandstorm Hong Kong Champion Strategy

It’s the preliminary preparation stage for the annual L’Oréal Marketer Competition Brandstorm! Some students came to me a while ago to help me review their entries and give my opinions. I just happened to post my suggestions here in the hope that they would be helpful to more people.

While I was learning about this year’s competition system and cases, I accidentally saw that there were a large number of people posting on a certain knowledge platform asking for team formation... There are still 20 days left to register and I am really worried about everyone when I submitted my entry plan. When I participated, it took at least more than a month for my team to write the preliminary report


We were the champions of the L'Oreal Business Competition Brandstorm Hong Kong. , get a ticket to Paris

In the summer of 2013, we won the L'Oreal Brandstorm Hong Kong Championship and flew to Paris to compete with more than 40 international teams for the international championship. My best friend and I fulfilled our common goal and promise to go on a graduation trip to Paris.

As business students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, our single discipline is not the most ideal combination, but the three of us have had many collaborative projects and other business competitions, and have long formed a tacit understanding of efficient execution and cooperation. At the same time, because we don't have an engineering background, we have to work harder when doing scientific research.

[Tips] L'Oreal is a company that focuses on scientific research, and all business decisions need to be based on science; therefore, we used a lot of market and scientific research reports in the business competition plan to support business suggestions.

When the jury announced that we won the championship, I thought of the nearly six months of overcoming difficulties and defeating generals. In order to achieve the goal of "winning the championship and flying to Paris", I spared no effort to prepare the plan all night long, and even sacrificed the time we should have spent looking for jobs as fresh graduates; all this switched quickly like a slideshow.


L'Oreal Business Competition Brandstorm Paris Finals Night

Although we failed to win the finals in Paris, we have benefited a lot from the opportunity to learn and communicate with excellent teams from all over the world. We are overwhelmed by the product creativity and presentation charm of the winning team. We are also lucky to gain friendships with teams from other countries; two people from the Philippine team later entered the fast-moving consumer goods industry, and we also exchange work experiences.

Because social practice is essential for studying business, I have been participating in various business competitions since my freshman year, including finance and accounting, marketing creativity, and entrepreneurship, and have won various awards.

But I must say that L'Oreal's Brandstorm is the most valuable one I have ever participated in.

In the business competition, L'Oreal will arrange a professional training team to guide the contestants, give us real project data as a reference, and experience the whole process of innovation, R&D, and marketing.

I can also get in touch with actual product and industry information, instead of many other companies (including foreign investment banks) whose business competitions give you simulated cases and fake data.

The 4A company that cooperated with L'Oreal used three working nights to help modify the posters, taught us how to do user insights, etc., and gave us very valuable practical marketing communication lessons. These experiences are not something you can learn from books in college.

By participating in the competition, I got a direct interview opportunity for an internship at a certain Asia-Pacific Office of L'Oreal's mass cosmetics division (this year's theme refers to CPD)

In the first round of interviews, I got along very well with the brand manager, so he gave me an offer on the spot

I first interned part-time for 4 months in the last semester

Later, the brand director gave me an unexpected offer for promotion

Let me stay full-time and directly become a product manager

So I continued to stay at L'Oreal after graduation

At the age of 21, I became the youngest product manager in this office

Speaking of the business competition itself, although the competition system and theme were different that year

But the experience in preparation skills, interpretation and understanding of cases, teamwork, etc. are still useful, and the essence remains unchanged


L’Oréal Business Competition Brandstorm Paris Finals

Tips:

First, let’s talk about the four elements of “winning”

1) Demonstrate a full understanding of L’Oreal’s brand positioning/cultural heritage/concepts. If a person working at L’Oreal sees this, will he think it is a normal solution/product that can be seen and recognized in L’Oreal? This requires a lot of learning and analysis of existing brand and product strategies.

2) Therefore, opinions, strategies, and suggestions all need data verification. L’Oreal is a company that pays great attention to data support. When I was a product manager, I spent at least 1/3 of my time every day looking at data-related reports or research reports. Whether each product is launched or not, how much it sells, are all supported by the data behind it.

3) The “chemistry” between team members, from doing research, making the first three-page PDF solution, to shooting videos, to the final presentation later, all require tacit cooperation between team members to complete efficiently and with high quality. The video you shoot is like a popular "video interview". In addition to assessing the content and creativity you share, because it involves visual images, you will see whether your team has a chemical reaction, and feel that you are very likable, energetic, thoughtful, passionate, and team-spirited.

4) Be bold in innovation, and this innovation is not only in product creativity, but also in all the modules that may be assessed in your competition. You can be brave enough to think outside the box. One of L'Oréal's core values ​​is innovation. This competition is also officially called the "Intrapreneur" competition. It is hoped that participants will regard themselves as innovative creators within the organization.

Second, suggestions on team formation

1) Professional background accounts for 30%

After looking at this year's cases, I personally think that the two most critical majors are business (responsible for the commercialization of the plan, finance, etc.), and a student who studies materials/chemical engineering/bioengineering, etc., who can understand the names of materials, can quickly interpret plastic-related scientific research materials, and build a reasonable plan.

2) Technical skills account for 20%

Multimedia skills (PS, video editing), English reading/writing/speech skills (very important, whether it is researching and reading a lot of English materials or writing a solution report with fluent language and proper terminology when making a report), Powerpoint skills (not just beautiful, the most important thing is that your PPT design and layout are closely integrated with the content you want to talk about, complementing each other)

3) Collaboration experience and sparks between teams 50%

I personally think this is the most important but easily overlooked. L'Oreal's case is not simple. It is not a report that can be completed in a few days. It requires a lot of research, analysis, brainstorming, and idea collision. After a break, repeat the above cycle. It is a huge workload process; after all, it is a competition for solutions, which requires continuous improvement and constant challenge of existing ideas to come up with a better solution. It is not a math problem that is done after it is solved.