L’Oréal Israel announces Brandstorm challenge winners

At the end of a six-month process, L’Oréal Israel selected the outstanding student team that won the 2023 Brandstorm competition for marketing innovation - three female students from Reichman University cracked the code!

The team from Reichman was selected out of 45 student competitors from Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University and Reichman University who participated in L’Oréal’s global open innovation competition, which is now in its 31st year.

The winning PROFACE team from Reichman University is made up of Danielle Huck, Leanne Neumann and Amit Hadad, from the business administration and psychology program specializing in marketing, and was led by Dr. Talia Rymon from Arison School of Business and teaching assistant Eliza Cohen-Solal, a graduate of Reichman University herself.

The theme of this year's competition challenged the students to enter the virtual worlds and crack the new code of the beauty world in the worlds of AR, AI, VR and the Metaverse.

The winning group's project was based on consumer insight that claims that there are currently no personalized instructional videos that teach makeup techniques. Thus by smart scanning facial features, and through personalization, it is possible to produce personal tutorials that will allow consumers to apply makeup in a more accurate and correct way. And above all that it will be adapted personally to their facial features. The technological solution proposed by the students allows for personalized feedback in real-time, and all of this with only a mobile phone screen.

The winning team will compete against students from leading universities in the world for the right to represent Israel in the grand final in Paris in June. The students from Israel joined 80,000 students who participated in the competition all over the world this year. The winning team in the global competition will be given the right to integrate as interns for three months at L’Oréal’s headquarters in Paris.

Brandstorm is one of the largest competitions in the world intended for students and has been held for 31 years, with the participation of about 60 countries. In last year's global finals, about 10,000 business innovation ideas were collected from the students.

In the final in Israel, the students presented their innovative solutions to judges Elie Sagiv, CEO of L’Oréal Israel; Libby Engel-Kess, VP of Human Resources; Liat Oliel, VP of Digital Marketing, Daniela Proski-Sion, VP of Communications and Sustainability, Shai Katz, head of the Face Care Category in the Consumer Products Division, and Sapir Gabayan, Project Manager.

According to Sagiv: "Once again this year, the Brandstorm global innovation competition gives outstanding students practical experience and real dealing with existing challenges in the competitive business world, as well as a rare opportunity for the winners to integrate into an internship at the L'Oréal headquarters in Paris. For L'Oréal, the program is a double opportunity: both to benefit from their innovative ideas and to identify talents and recruit them to its ranks. I am proud of the creative ideas presented to us by the Israeli students and I wish them success in L’Oréal’s international competition."

This article was written in cooperation with L’Oréal Israel