IMT Ghaziabad wins L’Oréal Brandstorm 2016 national finals

Conceptualized and launched in 1993, L’Oréal Brandstorm provides a unique opportunity for marketing students to unleash their creativity and to apply their ground-breaking ideas to one of L’Oréal’s international brands. The challenge is to either develop a new product line or service innovation for the brand with a fully integrated marketing plan or launch a campaign.
L’Oréal India today announced IMT Ghaziabad as the national winners of their flagship international business game ‘Brandstorm’. IMT Ghaziabad beat 700 teams across 21 B-school campuses to win Brandstorm and were up against NMIMS Mumbai, SIBM Pune, IIM Lucknow and SCMHRD Pune in the finals. Aanchal Rawal, Dewas Agarwal and Gaurav Malhan will now move to the International leg of the competition in Paris to compete against 45 countries.
Brandstorm challenges students to take on the role of innovation and digital leaders for a four to six month business journey where they work on real life challenges and are coached by top L’Oréal executives. For the 2016 edition, Brandstorm and L’Oréal’s La Roche-Posay brand invited students to work on a case study focused on attracting a new range of 15 to 25 year old consumers. For the first time, the concept to be developed by the students was based entirely on digital technology.
Makhan Pao by NMIMS showcased their presentation on La Roche Posay and were the 2nd runners up of the competition. They exhibited The facelift project – Reverse graffiti in Seoul for the anti pollution campaign, lRP Sunwagon at Rio Olympics for UV rays associate with sporting events, Wearable tech Skinzone in Paris total solution as a daily skin ritual and dermal clinic digital space.
The judges noted that they should have one single umbrella idea and work around it.
The jury included Bobby Pawar, MD Publicis Worldwide, Jean-Christophe Letellier, MD, L’Oréal India, Mohit James, Director-HR, L’Oréal India, Sandeep Kirpalani, Director, Luxe & Active Cosmetics, L’Oréal India, Shashibhushan Udyavar, Head Digital, Consumer Products Division, L’Oréal India. Team IMT Ghaziabad won the national finals for their out-of-the-box creativity, excellent team work, innovative digital ideas, thorough market research and an overall well-integrated campaign presentation. The ideas will be further fine-tuned to compete at the global finals.
SIBM, Pune Goal Crushers worked on taking your skin seriously, the Cinderella and fairy god mother prince and step sister story, the Diamond ball and digital ring Dermo advisor and skin analyser hologram application to be inserted in the phone as well as Sampling and vending machine Education, Advocacy etc.
IMT, Ghaziabad – Whimsical Trio showcased Consumers and Non consumers, the Upgrade to Dermocosmetics, #LRP Skintwin, hug robots to get skin analytics, Beaches in Goa for the getting new consumers and give hampers after downloading app LRP care, Gamification and avatars to share skin care issues and Build communities which are strong and youth like to share with friends and peers.
The winning team said, “We are so proud to represent IMT at this level and we’re ready to win it for L’Oreal India as well.”
There were 33 teams from IMT and after rigorous competition; this team arrived at this platform.
“What we have in our college is a very good connect with our seniors, we’ve been working on this since 4 months, out of which 2 months we’ve had sleepless nights since we didn’t know how our idea would be received by the judges until we presented it on this stage. We’ve taken perspectives from so many people in our college, so many seniors used to come and evaluate our presentation, tell us our loopholes and we sat back, brainstormed and re revised our ideas. We’ve been through 3 main rounds so far.” said the students.
When asked what made the three of them get together and come to work on this, they said “It was pure co incidence that we got together. We weren’t friends before L’Oreal happened and that was a big factor that helped us work professionally. When you form a group with your friends, you tend to get causal about the work aspect, but with us, we made sure to stick to the deadline. When we realized that Indians have represented L’Oreal and won previously, we were really motivated to be that team to win it this time as well.”
IIM, Lucknow – Usual Suspects worked on Technology disruption innovations smart kiosks and virtual reality, Interactive mirrors, digital catalogues and Interactive skin checkers at popular spots holographic wrist bands.
SYmbiosis SEM, HRD – Triple showed #startnow campaign feathers, Make a wish video showing what you want in life, LaRo ambassador in the app who advises, Vending machine, Digital screen for skin analysis and Campaign videos.

Shashi Bhushan, the Digital Head of Loreal, commented that “The main campaign idea should be illustrated in a single line and everything else should servant around it for integrating it all.”
Mohit James, Director-HR, L’Oréal India said, “ It is great to see so many students diligently participating in L’Oreal Brandstorm every year and we take great pleasure in hosting such creative events that bring us closer to potential employees. Brandstorm has become a strong attraction tool for us to engage with universities and business graduates. Our aim is to give students a real life business scenario, one that covers all aspects of beauty marketing from product development to consumer insights and integrated marketing communication. Through Brandstorm we share our passion for the beauty industry with a pool of young and upcoming talent.”