Bravo to the SMU’s Team &TANGLED, comprising marketing majors Cherie Hui (3^rd year, Business), Jessica Lim Jia Yi (3^rd year, Business) and Law Xin Ye (3^rd year, Economics), who emerged at the top of the International Final of L’Oréal Brandstorm 2018 – one of the world’s largest competitions for students with over 154,000 participants from more than 60 countries over the last 26 years.

At the International Final held in Paris on 17 May 2018, the SMU trio secured one of the three top awards – the CSR Award, which rewards the most sustainable innovation based on its contribution to reducing the environmental footprint of L’Oréal’s activities.  The other two awards given out were the Brand Award and Tech Award.

Having progressed to the International Final after earning the honour of being the National Champion, the SMU team stood out among six finalist teams from China, France, Ghana, India, the Netherlands and Singapore, and had won over the judges with their creativity and convincing marketing pitch.

The case problem for L’Oréal Brandstorm 2018 was: to invent the customer experience for the professional salon of the future – the experience should help to recruit and engage millennial customers, as well as to increase the hairdressers’ loyalty.  Through the challenge, the organiser wanted to see innovative digital solutions, connected technologies and sustainable initiatives.

&TANGLED conceptualised an invention to achieve accuracy and personalisation in hair colour results, thereby providing great value to both salons and end consumers.  With this technology, the trio proposed to make the salon experience a co-creation between hairdressers and consumers.

Following their recent achievement, we caught up with the team for their thoughts on this amazing journey that took them from Singapore all the way to the city of beauty and fashion.

Q: How’s the team feeling right now?

&TANGLED: This award represents the culmination of all our efforts over the past few months, we are very proud to have all our hard work recognised!  We are also very thankful to those who have supported us throughout this journey – our professors for their invaluable advice and our family members who rooted for us even when we had little time to spend with them.  Also not forgetting our friends who were very encouraging and understanding.  We are deeply grateful!

Q: How did you prepare for the competition?

&TANGLED: In preparation for the International Finals, we had intensive meetings every night on top of our internship commitments.  During this time, we developed a prototype, strengthened our presentation deck and aimed to perfect our pitch.  Given the tight timeline, we had to ensure that we produce all the necessary deliverables.

Working under such time-pressure, we learnt to trust one another.  We embraced each other’s weaknesses and leveraged on our individual strengths to work collectively towards our goal.

Various mentors from L’Oréal Singapore were also present throughout our journey leading up to the International Final, thus we also benefitted from their views and opinions – these were extremely helpful in guiding our thought process and shaping our presentation into a winning piece!

Q: This must have been an exceptional experience and awesome journey.  What is the biggest take-away for all of you?

&TANGLED: The biggest lesson we learnt must be that teamwork can make or break an idea and experience.  Being the strong team that we were, we could combine our efforts synergistically as we understood each other and worked together to resolve unexpected obstacles that crop up along the way.

From the beginning, we were aligned in our objectives and worked towards a common goal.  This made it easy for us to enjoy the process and truly believe in the feasibility of our idea.  The faith we had in our innovation and our teamwork were key to making critical decisions that would shape our entire presentation.  For example, we were given very little time before our final stage presentation and did not have our prototype prepared – but we remained calm and coordinated with each another to execute the next best action.

Throughout our Brandstorm journey, we have certainly conquered many challenges together but experienced many joyful moments together as well.  Beyond the cash prize, we can all agree that our friendship is the best gift from this entire Brandstorm experience!

[Featured Photo: SMU’s Team &TANGLED is L’Oréal Brandstorm 2018 International Final CSR Award winner.  (L-R) Cherie Hui, Jessica Lim and Law Xin Ye.]