University students bag top award in beauty competition
It’s not just in UAAP that we get to see top universities compete. It also happens when the country’s brightest from Ateneo, La Salle and the University of the Philippines gather in a Brandstorm, where they try to outdo and out-think each other.
Team Extreme from De La Salle University, composed of Pixie Eraña, Elise Veloso and Austin Uy, rocked the night as they emerged champions and won an all-expense-paid trip to Paris, where they will compete against 41 countries. They were guided by Anlex Basilio.
“We named our group extreme because it is our commitment to push the limits and go beyond what is expected,” Eraña says. Team Extreme also won the award for best communications campaign.
L’Oréal held the L’Oréal Brandstorm competition Philippine National Finals last March 17; it is now on its third season.
L’Oréal invites college students in their final two years to act as marketing brand manager for an existing L’Oréal brand, and create a new product line and overall communications campaign for it.
This year’s chosen brand was L’Oréal Professionel Homme, a range of hair care and styling products designed to meet the specific needs of men’s hair.
Team Extreme’s winning “imagined” product was a salon service called Neoxea, a universal solution for shaving.
Standing out among other products, predominantly hair straighteners, shampoos and hair remedies, Neoxea offers direct solutions for shaving after-effects, such as razor wounds and acne.
The winning product
And since L’Oréal’s Brandstorm theme was to “go beyond” conventional thinking, Team Extreme aimed to make Neoxea into a brand that would go beyond the shaving norm.
Neoxea has three elements, each designed to further utilize the hair removal technology they have created.
The first phase is the epidermal relaxant, where a protective layer is placed on the skin.
Next is the hair removal mask.
And finally, the post-treatment tonic is applied. The tonic also prevents hair from growing back abruptly.
Afterwards, Neoxea offers the “Pentacare effect”—a post-procedure that promises five distinct solutions: no hair, no hair growth, no acne, no wounds, and moisturized skin. The result is a clean-shaven look for men.
Team Extreme also created a symbol—an armadillo. “It will serve as their protection against unwanted hair,” Veloso says.
“When men see the armadillo in the salon, they’ll know that Neoxea is available for them,” Eraña adds.
Brandstorm encourages students to dream, excel and succeed together. It emphasizes the need to work together as a team and to turn wild ideas into products. This competition—now on its 19th edition worldwide—challenges students to go beyond what is impossible.
“This is a culmination of an entire season, a celebration of talent and individualism,” says Michael Mendoza, recruitment manager for L’Oréal Philippines. “We encourage them to go all the way to the top.”
An adventure for students
Tina Ampil, human resource director for L’Oréal, describes this competition as a two-fold adventure for students. “They learn to become an international manager and they have fun at the same time,” she explains. “We’d like to teach them that without teamwork, it’s not gonna work.”
For the L’Oréal team, Brandstorm is a way to infuse new blood into the highly-competitive world of beauty and fashion.
“They have fresh perspectives. We want them to discover another angle to explore another way to be creative,” Ampil adds.
Teams presented their imagined products to a jury presided by L’Oréal Philippines’ managing director Luc-Olivier Marquet, L’Oréal human resource director Tina Ampil, L’Oréal Philippines’ general manager for Professional Products Charisse Hernandez, McCann Erickson Philippines’ managing director Nandy Villar and Hair Asia president and CEO Evelyn Alvaran-Cruz.
It was a closed-door competition last March 16 at Crowne Plaza, Galleria, where all teams presented their innovative campaigns.
“Believe in yourself,” says Team Extreme’s Uy, who is taking up advertising management. He explained that it was the most important lesson he has learned after working intensely for six months on this product.
His teammate, Eraña, is taking up applied economics and advertising management, while Veloso is into marketing management.
Anlex Basilio, who has been teaching at DLSU for seven years, describes the win as “encouraging.”
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