More than 30 IE teams participated in L’Oréal Brandstorm Competition

Around 90 IE students participated this year in the L’Oréal Brandstorm competition. Brandstorm is an international contest in which current University and junior Master students are given a Marketing and a Technological challenge they have to work on during a few weeks in groups of three. Participants submit a 3 slide presentation with their idea to solve the challenges and compete with other teams from their school on a first phase. The winner of each school develops its idea further and is helped by a real marketing agency to compete with other schools in the country on the national phase. These winners participate in a regional phase and finally on the World Final that takes place in Paris, where the company’s HQ is based.

More than 30 IE teams formed by current students of IE undergraduate and master programs attended the information sessions organized by Talent & Careers and signed up for this year’s competition. The team “CCU”, composed of three MCC students, Urvashi Athavale, Celeste Hugenholtz and Cambria Hayashino, was the IE winner and participated in the National Final that took place on April 25th at L’Oréal Spain headquarters, in Madrid. The team has shared their experience with us:

“We learned about the contest through posters around campus and other students who talked about it. We were initially not planning on doing the contest because we were all busy with school, but decided to sign up! It seemed like a fun way to apply what we were learning in our classes on a real-world problem. It looked like a challenge we wanted to tackle. Working on the project was great! We had a stellar team, worked well together and enjoyed the challenge of coming up with a compelling product and an engaging way to present it. The L’Oréal team was super welcoming and friendly during the National Finals, and it was fun getting to see all the other finalist’s ideas as well. Plus, getting to see the behind-the-scenes at L’Oréal was great! We definitely recommend students to apply on future contests. And in order to take advantage of the full experience, make sure you are creative and thorough – and have fun! It’s a good way to get hands-on experience and helped us all prep for the rigor of our final projects.”

In addition to being a fun experience, business competitions like L’Oréal Brandstorm are a good opportunity to put into practice the knowledge acquired in class in a real-world company challenge. Furthermore, it increases student visibility at top worldwide employer and gives them the opportunity to network with skilled professionals in the corporate ecosystem. From Talent & Careers we encourage future IE students to participate in these kinds of initiatives!