Mumbai : SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai has won the National Finals of L’Oréal Brandstorm, the flagship international marketing game of L’Oréal. Himanshi Dandona, Mitali Parekh, Ujjwal Chadha from SPJIMR beat 45 teams from across the country in a nail-biting finish and will go on to compete against teams from 44 countries at the international finals in Paris this June.  Winners of the international competition will win 10,000 Euros towards a trip anywhere in the world and the coveted L’Oréal Brandstorm Cup.

Created in 1993, L’Oréal Brandstorm challenges students to develop a new product line for one of L’Oréal’s brands as well as a fully integrated marketing plan and launch campaign for the products they develop. The game requires students to analyze current market conditions – from styling trends to spending habits – in order to identify niche opportunities for their products. This year’s competition focused on the L’Oréal Paris brand with the challenge to develop a new innovative ‘Haircare & Styling’ product or product range for the South East Asia zone with an integrated marketing strategy.

Team Les Avant Gardes from SPJIMR won the finals for their out of the box creativity, excellent presentation, innovative product ideas, thorough market research and a well-integrated campaign.  Other finalists who participated in this year’s India finals were from Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) – first runners up, Symbiosis Centre for Management Human Resource -second runner up and Management Development Institute (MDI, Gurgaon). Each team presented their product launch proposals to a panel of experts comprising of Pierre-Yves Arzel, Managing Director– L’Oréal India, Mohit James, Director Human Resources – L’Oréal India, Satyaki Ghosh, – Director, Consumer Products Division – L’Oréal India, Manashi Guha, Marketing Manager, L’Oréal Paris and Namrata Nandan, SVP and GM, McCann Ericskon.

Mohit James, Director HR – L’Oréal India said, “Over the years, this fiercely contested competition has become the mecca of future leaders in marketing. Students are challenged with real life business scenarios and this gives them an opportunity to do exciting and innovative work on real brands.  This serves as a great platform for L’Oreal to meet and choose the prospective employees. This year we saw fantastic talent from the young teams here. The participating teams and their mentors have worked very hard to understand the brief and come up with a winning proposal. Winning the competition amongst 45 talented participating teams is a great accomplishment and I wish them luck for the international finals later this year.”

Expressing their exhilaration over winning the finals, the team from SPJIMR said, “We are really thrilled to win this competition. The entire Brandstorm journey has been very interesting. We have been preparing since last 3 months for this intense competition and after winning the competition we really feel “We are worth it”.”