UNYP team has success in the Unilever Future Leaders’ League!

Three UNYP students, Danai Baouraki, Nikola Kmoníčková and Daniela Slezáková, took part in the Unilever Future Leaders‘ League (UFLL) and won the CEE National Final which took place in Warsaw in December 2015. 

Unilever Future Leaders’ League is a marketing competition that brings together students from all over the world to participate in a creative brand challenge and work with real brands on real cases. This year the regional round was focused on the brand Rexona and the teams were tasked with creating a marketing strategy for a new product called Rexona Compressed, which is not yet on the Czech market.  “Studying at UNYP has given us the foundation of the terms and the structure of how to approach strategically a marketing plan. All the basic theories we used as our base and build up our ideas from there,” said Danai. 

UFLL was open for the teams from the Czech Republic for the first time this year and UNYP team seized this opportunity and applied with their CVs and a one page case resolution. They were chosen from 125 teams to attend the CEE National Final in Warsaw where each country – Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania – were represented by one team. They managed to succeed in this tough competition and won the regional round to continue to the European Final. The team attributed the success to the well-rehearsed presentation and visualization of their ideas. “I think that they also liked the way we talked about ourselves in the introduction part. It was more fun and friendly rather than informative,” added Daniela. 

“I never did any of these challenges and I really want to give it a shot and Unilever is a really great brand,” said Danai, for whom it was the first time. Nikola and Daniela are a bit more experienced since they already participated in the L’Oréal Brandstorm Challenge. “For us it was more about the challenge because we knew that we can do better compared to the last time,” explained Nikola, “we learned from our mistakes and improved incredibly.”

The UNYP team will represent the Czech Republic at the European Final which will take place in Rotterdam from January 26th to January 28th and they will compete with 10 to 12 teams from the rest of Europe. They will also have a unique opportunity to visit Unilever’s European Headquarter in Rotterdam, meet Unilever’s European leaders and participate in training, team building, and networking. The final step of UFLL will be the Global Final in London which will take place in March or April 2016.

Unilever Future Leaders’ League and other similar competitions are a good way how to stand out and have some extra-curricular activity in your resume. “Important for people who might consider the challenge next time is how Unilever treats the contestants. They put a lot of effort into that and it was well organized. They were very keen on cooperating in the future as well. And we also get a lot of presents,” said the UNYP team. “Give it a shot, even if you don’t get past the first round, don’t let it beat you down and  just try it again next year or a different competition and learn what you could improve,” added Danai.

Congratulations and good luck in the next round!