Congrats to the UNYP team for their success in the L’Oréal Brandstorm Challenge!

This year, UNYP placed third in the regional round for the L’Oréal Brandstorm Challenge. Created in 1992, this challenge gives students all over the world the opportunity to design innovative marketing promotions for realistic situations. In addition to global recognition, L’Oréal uses the competition to recruit young, talented contestants, offering the group of winners an internship within the company.

Four teams from UNYP competed in the first round of the challenge for the Czech Republic this year. Most of the teams (approximately 50) that entered the competition were from the University of Economics or VŠE.  After round one, only one UNYP team moved forward to compete with other teams from the Czech & Slovak Republics, making it to round three. They then competed with two Hungarian teams that earned first and second place in the regional finals, followed by our team from UNYP, with the fourth and fifth spots taken by teams from VŠE.

UNYP is proud of Daniela Slezáková, Nikola Kmoníčková and Tran Bich Thuy for their hard work and accomplishment in this challenge.  We took a minute to sit with the winners and pick their brains about the competition.

Where are you from?

Daniela: I grew up in Liberec, which is, regionally, a large city, but it is incredibly small and quiet compared to Prague. I came here because Prague offers greater possibilities in terms of education.

Tran: I am from Hanoi, Vietnam. I moved to Prague three years ago because of my studies.

Nikola: I am from Poprad, Slovakia, but I have lived my whole life in Liberec, CR and moved to Prague to study three years ago.

Daniela majors in Communications & Mass Media, and both Tran and Nikola are Business Administration majors.

What made you decide to attend UNYP?

Daniela: I decided to attend UNYP because the university provided me with the possibility to study this particular major in English, along with the ability to interact with people from different cultures.

Tran: When I graduated from high school, I wanted to continue at a university that provides an international environment and lectures in English. UNYP was the best choice.

Nikola: After spending a month studying in New York during high school, I wanted to continue  studying in English at university and UNYP was the best choice.

Tell us a little bit about the project.

Daniela: It was a marketing competition. First, the teams must complete a thorough analysis of a given market, brand and its positioning. Then, the goal is to come up with a new strategy with  plans to achieve a projected outcome. This year it was focused on the brand Lancôme, in terms of travel retail (exclusively airports). The strategy was to recruit new customers, utilizing global shopper possibilities and, finally, to loyalize the core clientele.

Why were you interested in this particular project?

Nikola: The L’Oréal Brandstorm Challenge is a recognized competition that provides the opportunity to students to test their skills and knowledge, meet with and present in front of the representatives of L’Oréal and McCann and, eventually, get the opportunity to work for one of the brands in the future.

What was your greatest challenge in creating and carrying out this project?

Tran: From my point of view, the greatest challenge was to come up with new ideas/innovation and make them achievable.

Nikola: One of the greatest challenges of the project was to come up with an idea that would amaze the judges while being realistic and creative.

How was UNYP instrumental in helping you create this project?

Daniela: I think the school has been an important factor in how I generally approach tasks like this now. Before coming to UNYP, my English was much poorer and my way of thinking was much less broad. At this point, we are better able to do case studies of this sort and present them in an engaging manner. It definitely has something to do with how the courses/lectures are structured. 

Tran: UNYP provides a good marketing class that helped us a lot. We used the theory that we learned in the class and we applied it while creating our project for the L’Oréal Brandstorm Competition.

Nikola: UNYP provided us with the core knowledge of marketing and international business, which was crucial to succeed in this project. Moreover, the presentation and English speaking skills that are practiced at UNYP enabled us to be more confident in front of the judges and gave us the edge over our competition.

The UNYP team agreed that the biggest advantage they had was the excellent English language and presentation skills that they gained at UNYP.  This approach to studying differs from other Czech universities in that classes there are taught in Czech and presentations are not the focal point of lessons.  The winners also said they learned a lot of different approaches to problem solving at UNYP, which was also key in designing their project.