TWO STUDENT teams emerged as champions in the university finals of the 2015 L’Oreal Brandstorm business competition held at the Ricardo and Dr. Rosita Leong Hall auditorium on February 16.

The said teams were Team THGH, comprised of communication senior Emmanuel Hilao and communication juniors Thurees Obenza and Vida Alegre, and Team Wayferers, composed of management engineering seniors Nicole Sy and Julie Lim, and management senior Sam Sebastian.

L’Oreal Brandstorm is an annual business competition that invites students to apply their marketing strategies to one of cosmetics and beauty company L’Oreal Group’s international brands and distribution channels.

This year, the participating teams were given two tasks: To analyze the market of and define the opportunities in the travel retail channel of the Lancôme brand, and to propose a new retail experience for its travel retail shops to attract potential customers.

Hilao said that their strategy centered on “bringing the focus back on the global traveler and giving [the target market] an unforgettable retail experience.”

On the other hand, Lim said that their team’s vision was for Lancôme to become “the face of travel retail.”

“We gave product recommendations, proposed new retailing campaign and a revamped digital campaign for Lancôme that encompasses this vision and the judges liked our idea,” she said.

L’Oreal Brandstorm features four phases: The pre-case study, and the university, national and international finals.

In the university finals, 12 teams presented their pre-case study proposals to a panel of judges consisting of marketing executives from L’Oreal Group along with Leadership and Strategy Department Instructor Arturo Valencia.

Out of the 12, Teams THGH and Team Wayferers will represent Ateneo in the upcoming national finals, where they will compete against the winning teams of De La Salle University and University of the Philippines-Diliman.

The winning team from the national finals will represent the country in the L’Oreal Brandstorm International Finals to be held in Paris, France.

Editor’s Note: Julie T. Lim is the Externals manager of The GUIDON while Thurees Obenza is a member of the Multimedia Staff. With reports from Ennah A. Tolentino