L’Oreal Brandstorm 2018. A personal account. #teamzurai from Nigeria
By: Vivian Uzor
Tags: Competition, Innovation, Startup, Loréal

Hey! If you’re here then you’re probably thinking of participating in the L’Oreal brainstorm competition and trying to garner as much information as possible about the program before taking the first step. My name is Vivian Uzor and I participated in the L’Oreal Brandstorm 2018 (Invent the professional salon experience of the future) along with my formidable team members: Jessica and Valerie (Team Zurai!). I decided to blog about my experience as well as provide some tips and lessons I learned through out the process. I understand that you’ve tirelessly scanned the internet for resources on this prestigious competition, so I decided to give a personalised account of my experience with the competition (you can’t find this anywhere else :) ) and I really hope you enjoy this read.

I reached out to a course mate who had an obsession with the hair industry with an inclination for logical thinking and another course mate who was a brand/marketing expert, a blogger and technology enthusiast

Experience — First stage (Building the team and Preparing a pitch deck): I found out about the competition on heysuccess.com (you need to check this site out!) and fell in love instantly. Why? Because it was all about innovation. I’ve always been a huge proponent of technological disruption, so I thought it would be fun to build a team and brainstorm on how to make the world better!. I reached out to a course mate who had an obsession with the hair industry with an inclination for logical thinking and another course mate who was a brand/marketing expert, a blogger and technology enthusiast. I had the right team, just the perfect blend to smash the competition, so work began. We performed extensive research on hair & salon industry as well as technological trends that we could adapt to our solution. Through the brainstorm resource pack, We had access to the right resources, but we also had a slight challenge. There was minimal or no information about the hair industry in sub-saharan Africa. So each one of us took introspective looks on our lives and the challenges we faced while in the salons. Voila! We found the major focus of our solution and we had the best solution for that problem. We reached out to a start up incubation hub on campus that helped us package and shape our idea, we were ready for business. On the day of the submission deadline, we submitted our 3-pitch slide (the required number of slides for the first stage) which was a preppy, infographic which summarily described our proposed solution, the challenges of the young woman with the salon industry and our business strategy, the rest is history.

Our strategy was to be realistic, play the part of startup junkies seeking funds from investors, like those in shark tank ;)

Experience — second stage (More brainstorming and strategizing): On a beautiful Tuesday morning, we received an email from the L’Oreal talent manager stating that we had advanced to the next stage. Of course, we were excited, we were getting closer to pitch our solution to a global audience. but next level meant more work. For this stage, which was called the national pre-selection stage, we were instructed to submit a more detailed 10-slide presentation (as per the requirement)that would include an in-depth description of our solution, target market, SWOT analysis, more like a start up pitch. This pitch would be evaluated and would determine if we’d become national finalists, the fun part. Our strategy was to be realistic, play the part of startup junkies seeking funds from investors, like those in shark tank ;). We used actual figures from the most extensive research we’d ever done. We interviewed colleagues, hair dressers, entrepreneurs anyone who would provide valuable information for our presentation. Another brilliant move was using a business model called the LEAN business model to organise our content. Our presentation also had a look and feel that was consistent with our previous presentation. From the fonts, to the characters on our infographic, we had the right branding that would enable us stand out.

Unlike conventional competitions, We didn’t have to make any boring presentations, instead we got to shoot a video like movie stars. A movie producer, sound engineer and make up artist were assigned to work with us on this video, talk about Class ;)

Experience — third stage (Our fun video shoot): One thing I admired about the selection process was that we were not kept in suspense for such a long time in any of the previous stages, however, this stage was different. We hadn’t heard from L’Oreal for several days, so we became slightly discouraged and our anxieties had washed away every inch of hope we had. I remember singing “hope for the best, but expect the worst”. On Tuesday morning, we received an email stating the two finalists from Nigeria. Our team name was first on the list! Of course we were elated!. This stage was another hurdle we had to jump to get to Paris, our dream land, the shangri-la, where we’d get to present to a global audience. Unlike conventional competitions, We didn’t have to make any boring presentations, instead we got to shoot a video like movie stars. A movie producer, sound engineer and make up artist were assigned to work with us on this video, talk about Class ;). We had the opportunity to direct our own video presentation, so we decided to leverage some lush sceneries around campus to deliver a hip, engaging video which effectively conveys the viability of our ideas, in three hours. It was tough, but we managed to produce something decent in the end. See some photos from the experience below:

Picturesque Scene, Competent and Vibrant crew, rehearsals and voice over exercises.. It was about time!.

…. THE END OF THE ROAD

Unfortunately for us, The final presentation was scheduled on the same day we were sealing our journey as undergrads (writing our final papers) so we had to dash out immediately after our examination. We had earlier prepared a classroom, professional camera and a laptop. We made the presentation and it was a wrap! We had a sense of relief that the pressure was over.

After the presentation, we received feedback of the teams chosen to represent Africa. We weren’t among the teams selected, sorry to disappoint that it wasn’t the kind of ending you were expecting, but on the flip-side, we did learn a lot from the process. I thought deeply about what we could have done better and decided to compile a list that I believe will be beneficial to everyone intending to participate. Hope you enjoy!

Lessons learned:

L’Oreal’s resource pack: Please don’t underestimate these life savers. These resources helped us gain insights into the larger market of the hair industry. Also L’Oreal was kind enough to include educative materials about technologies they were working on. So leverage these materials, you never know where your inspiration will emerge from :)

Get help: An anonymous wise man once said: “you are never strong enough that you don’t need help”. Get help from people who have been through the same process, people with more experience especially in competitions and building businesses. In our case, we sought help from reps of a start up incubation lab who had prepped other students for similar competitions. It was the best decision we made as it was instrumental in getting us far in the contest.

Keep it simple: During our final presentation, one of the feedbacks we received was this and I quote “Your solution is clever, but you need to keep it simple and easy to understand”. We went all the way to make our idea seem viable that we infused some complex technologies without understanding our audience. Most of our judges didn’t have tech backgrounds and we failed to simplify our solution and terms we used. Don’t make this mistake.

Build the right team: If you really want to pull the strings in this competition you’d have to put on your recruiting cap to find the right people, ok well it’s not that serious, but be sure to hire A-players. One way to do this is understand the competition and its requirements then find people who’d have the capacity to deliver on those requirements. Also, recruiting people who are diverse is very key. For example, our competition’s theme was about creating the professional salon experience of the future. I wasn’t just keen on finding a bunch of nerdy tech enthusiasts, but those who were both passionate about the subject with the analytical thinking and strategic mindset to innovate.

Relax: Another wise man said, Brandstorm is great, but There will be other opportunities. Always “Hope for the best, but expect the worst” having this in mind will keep you at ease.

P.S DID I ALSO MENTION THAT WE GOT GIFT BAGS AS COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATING?

Photos below: