The Brandstorm L’Oréal Competition

Virgile Faury, Clément Ghidini and Clara Muller, MBA in Hospitality Management 2013-2016

As current students of the MBA in Hospitality Management (IMHI) we have the opportunity of taking advantage of ESSEC classes, which enables us to take classes out of the hospitality context.

Attending Mr. Simon Nyeck class in "Anthropology of luxury brands", the final exam work was based on the worldwide L'Oréal competition, the Brandstorm L'Oréal. 

Since 1992, the company has given the opportunity to young students to participate in this unique international business competition. With a reward of 10 000€ as well as a coaching from top L'Oréal executives, the Brandstorm is an exciting way to challenge students in a real business case study.

This year's topic is to find a digital strategy for L'Oréal brand La Roche-Posay, in order to attract 15-25 year old customers. Indeed, this dermocosmetic brand is lacking Millenials customers, and looking at the evolution of digital nowadays, a strategy based on technology is inescapable.

The competition is organised around 4 major steps:

1) The pre-selection to be part of the 12 teams competing for the campus final.

2) The campus final, which will determine the team representing the school against other French schools.

3) The national final regrouping all participating schools and their finalist team, in order to determine the team that will represent France at the international final. 

4) The international final, where countries will finally compete to win the Brandstorm 2016. 

Almost 3300 teams worldwide participate in this challenge, which means that the competition is very tough. We need to be unique, consistent and surprising if we want to access to the international final.

Thanks to the Brandstorm, we are facing a concrete and realistic case study which also enables us to meet managers and executives of La Roche-Posay and L'Oréal. 

With our "Thunderteam", we are proud to have won the ESSEC final, and we will do our best to represent IMHI and ESSEC at the national final and, of course, win !!

It is extremely exciting to be part of this competition. We always want to go further to the next step and push even more our limits.