The College of Management (CM), UP Visayas once again aced the national championship of this year’s L’Oréal Brandstorm 2023: Crack the New Codes of Beauty Philippines National Finals.
CM’s Team MÈRE BEAUTY is one of the two national champions who bested over 3,200 teams and is set to represent the Philippines on the global stage in the competition’s International Semifinals. The team is comprised of third year Business Administration (Marketing) students Vince Delfin and Great Martin Mana-ay, and 2nd-year Accountancy student Mikko Apelo. The national finals and awarding ceremonies were held on March 31, 2023, at the Marco Polo Hotel in Ortigas.
L’Oréal Brandstorm is a global business and innovation challenge that offers students pedagogical and professional experience in tackling a real business case in the beauty industry. It provides them with the opportunity to innovate new ideas and work as a brand leader for the international make-up beauty brand, L’Oréal. Over the years, L’Oréal reported that the competition had attracted more than half a million students from hundreds of universities in 65 countries, turning Brandstorm into a real innovation catalyst since 1992.
Now in its 31st year, over 12,000 individual players competed nationwide in the Philippine leg of the competition. This year’s contest centered on “beauty tech,” or the invention of beauty products, services, experiences, and solutions empowered by up-to-date technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and the Metaverse. L’Oréal narrates that the Brandstorm echoes the company’s philosophy of innovation, entrepreneurship, and excellence, and exemplifies its commitment to sustainability, inclusivity, and technology in the beauty industry. Along these lines, the contending projects were evaluated on the criteria of innovativeness, technology, sustainability, inclusivity, feasibility, and scalability.
Team MÈRE BEAUTY's campaign is “Unconditional Beauty” with the tagline "Unconditional Beauty for Empowered Women." The winning team pitched for the Materna, a device incorporating the power of AI and Metaverse to include mothers in 'beauty spaces' where they are recognized and celebrated. The team's inspiration for Materna was their "moms who give unconditional love—an epitome of unconditional beauty."
UPV had a total of nine teams that qualified in the Top 24 National Semifinalists, two of which advanced to the top six National Finals—Team MÈRE BEAUTY and Team DiVAs. The latter is comprised of third-year Business Administration (Marketing) students Diana Pearl Tano and Alyssa Julienne Bañares, and second year Business Administration (Marketing) student Vence Gabrielle Rodrigo.
The teams from CM in the L'Oréal Brandstorm 2023 are mentored by Prof. Maria Theresa Albaña, Ms. Pearl Gladys Diano, and Mr. Oscar Jinon Jr., all of whom are faculty members of the Department of Accounting.
Notably, UP Visayas is the only non-Manila-based university to compete in the national finals, joining the University of the Philippines Diliman, San Beda University, University of Santo Tomas, and Enderun Colleges. UP Diliman’s Team Cloud Chasers was declared as one of the two national champions.
UPV CM has a blazing track record in the Brandstorm competition to date. In 2017, in CM’s first year of joining Brandstorm, a team of senior BS in Management students won the National Championship and represented the Philippines in the Worldwide Finals held in Paris, France. In 2018, the CM team won as first runner-up and bagged the Best in Team Spirit Special Award. Last year, the CM Team was one of the six national champions, which represented the Philippines on the global stage in the competition’s Inclusion Track International Semifinals.
Exciting times are ahead as UPV once again journeys on the world stage! (With sources from L'Oréal Group and Prof. Maria Theresa Albaña)
