Indonesia
Triple A Team Goes to Paris!
Every year since 1992, L’Oreal, the leading cosmetic brand had a game competition, L’oreal Brandstorm. The participants were students from many countries. How’s the game? The students were required to play International Marketing Director of a beauty product from L’Oreal. Now, their job was to come up with a new creative and innovative product. The exciting part is, the product may not exist, but it must make sense and based on an actual research.
Every year, these college students were assigned to different task. This year their job was to develop a series of new product for men’s product series Kiehl’s. In addition, they must come up with and execute a proper and effective marketing strategy to expand Kiehl’s. There were 45 countries signed up for this year annual international competition. Each will send a representative team to compete for the international title in Paris.
The champion to represent Indonesia for this year was Team A students from Indonesia University, Faculty of Economy, Majoring in Marketing Management. They were Aditya Kristanto, Amadea Novia Ferti, Agita Nalsalia Pinem. Let’s have a chat, shall we….
Superkids: How did you start join in this competition?
Adit: It began when we were freshmen. We determined to join L’Oréal BRANDSTORM competition, because we saw a challenge and eager to put our marketing skill to a test. We had to wait for three year to prepare our self for this year competition, you know.
Amadea: When the time came, we assembled a team of three, as the requirement said. Then we discussed, conducted analysis and research, and eventually agreed with one idea.
Superkids: Which is?
Adit: Well, we must create product that represent Kiehl’s men’s product. We noticed that recent trend on boys was they like to grow beard and mustache, you know, like David Beckham. The thing was, Asian is rather difficult growing good looking beard and mustache. They grow messy and rugged. So we aimed to create a product that can help Asian guys to grow cool beard and mustache.
Superkids: Wow, that cool! Lol…
Agita: It was! And for the research we went as far as to interview any guy with mustache and beard we met at the mall. Well. Now we have more collection of bearded guy friends. Lol.
Amadea: It turned out we won and represent teams of UI. Next step we competed against other students from other universities in Indonesia and eventually were selected to joined in the international competition on behalf of Indonesia.
Superkids: Anyway, what’s so interesting about this game for you?
Adit: Well, this is the only competition where you get to explore and expand the entrepreneurship inside you. So we were demanded to be not only creative but also innovative in creating a product, throw it to the market with proper marketing and communication strategy, and then convinced the jury with a presentation. On top of that, team work is also an important point here.
Superkids: Congrats all! How does it feel to represent Indonesia to Paris?
All: Very Happy!
Amadea: We shared a common dream since we were little kids, we wanted to go abroad on our own. Now we reached it. We can go to Paris, with every expense paid off, and we get to give better name for Indonesia.
Superkids: Say that L’oreal International decided to really work on your product, how’s that?
All: Very proud for sure and….we will ask for royalty. Lol!
MAHARANI INDRI
