L’Oreal Brandstorm is a global marketing competition where students are given the opportunity to become brand managers for one of L’Oreal’s 25 global brands. The competition is currently on its 17th year, but it is the first time to be held in the Philippines.
Aside from the Ateneo, the University of the Philippines and De La Salle University participated in the nationwide contest.
Two teams, Three Marketeers and Team Soleil, qualified for the competition’s national finals. Six Ateneo teams competed during the university finals on November 19 at the Ching Tan Room.
“Turn ideas into products”
The brand in focus for the competition is Maybelline New York, a worldwide cosmetics giant. Six teams with three members are challenged to “turn ideas into products” and create the “first fragrance” for Maybelline NY.
The teams get to analyze the perfume market, build a marketing strategy for Maybelline NY, and even design the packaging of their product. They presented their study to a panel of judges, which included L’Oreal executives.
The products presented ranged from mineral perfumes to perfumes befitting the mood of the consumer.
About the teams
One of the winning teams was the Three Marketeers, composed of senior BS Management Engineering students Rozelle Anne Noriega, Michael Jonathan Biscocho, and Mara Carmela Llanera.
Their winning entry was a solid perfume which comes in three different scents with two different packages—compact and cream stick. Both of these packages contain the day and night variant of each scent.
“When we were doing our consumer research we found out that one thing that consumers are looking for is convenience, practicality and portability,” Noriega said. “Other perfumes are big, you can’t carry it around and they break very easily, they are very fragile.”
Team Soleil, meanwhile, is composed of junior BS Management students Ma. Concepcion Arcilla, Wyatt Caraway Curie Ong, and Mark Andrew Elepaño. Their winning entry was a perfume containing two scents—one for day use, and one for night use.
The biggest challenge that the team faced was their inexperience in marketing. “We needed to get acquainted with marketing terms and had to give ourselves a crash course on everything we needed to know,” said Ong.
Arcilla, however, thought that their inexperience also worked to their advantage because “we weren’t tied down by rules or the norm.”
“We just did what we thought made logical sense,” she said.
Audience member Marla Paulina Santos (III BS MIS) said the teams made their PowerPoint slides into nice presentations during the finals. “I like how the participants…utilized their limited sources properly, and they really looked like they knew what they were talking about,” she said.
Eyes on the prize
The two teams will be advancing to the L’Oreal Brandstorm National Finals, where they will go against teams from the University of the Philippines and De La Salle University. Whoever wins in the national finals will compete in Paris, France against teams from all over the world.
Arcilla said her team will not be satisfied with just winning the university finals.
“The grand prize for winning international finals in Paris is a trip to any destination in the world worth 10,000 euros. That’s our motivation to work even harder.”
