SMU’s Team Epicphany has emerged the 2016 winners of the L'Oréal Brandstorm Campus National Final, and will be representing Singapore at the international final to be held in Paris in June this year.

The team comprises three final-year undergraduates majoring in Marketing at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business – Jessica Lim, Sharon Lim and Tan Li Tong.  They clinched the coveted first place in the national competition held on 24 March after beating teams from NUS and NTU.  In addition, Li Tong also won the MediaCorp Star Award for Best Presenter for her outstanding performance and stage presence.

Brandstorm is a unique business competition by L'Oréal for students to unleash their creativity and apply ground-breaking ideas to one of L'Oréal's international brands and distribution channels.  Since 1992, the competition has given to more than 80,000 students worldwide the possibility to work on real life challenges and be coached by top L'Oréal executives.

Each year, undergraduate business student teams are pitted against each other in solving brand and marketing challenges posed by L’Oreal.  The case study brand this year was La Roche-Posay – a range of dermatological skin care products.  Teams were to come up with a strategic marketing plan involving an integrated marketing communications campaign that incorporates active use of social media.

Following in-depth research on the purchasing and usage behaviours of the target customer segments, the SMU trio conceived a four-stage '#Be Sensitive' campaign that shows how customers 'get in touch with their sensitive side'.  They believe that given the nature of the product, the right influence on consumers’ emotions and their concept of ‘self’ was critical in aligning the brand to user profiles in order to achieve desired product outcomes.  Their creativity and strong marketing pitch clearly won the judging panel’s approval.

Heartiest congratulations to the team and best wishes to them as they prepare for stiff competition at the international final in Paris!
 

[Featured photo: (L-R) Jessica Lim, Sharon Lim and Tan Li Tong will represent Singapore at the L'Oréal Brandstorm International Final in Paris to be held in June this year.]