Marketing challenge: useful learning pays off

Marketing student Mirran Boyle says useful learning throughout her studies meant she knew entering a marketing challenge would be the right way to put it into practice. Here, she explains more about L’Oreal Brandstorm. 

I got involved with L’Oreal Brandstorm through marketing lecturer Thomas McAlinden - he posted it on his LinkedIn and I knew this was an opportunity I wanted to pursue, so I signed up! I was assigned to a team of three within just a few days. 

The L'Oréal Brandstorm challenge for this year invited students to redefine and reimagine the future of luxury fragrance and the market. It required a specific focus on innovation, science, technology, sustainability, and consumer experience. So far, we have completed our final submission. 

For our concept, we developed an immersive, multi-sensory and technological campaign experience for L'Oréal's brand atelier cologne - which involved a lot of research including consumer trends, emerging technologies and building a solution that is not only feasible but scalable and aligned with L'Oréal's direction. 

Taking part in Brandstorm has been incredibly rewarding and valuable because it allows students to apply what we learn throughout our time at university in a real-world context rather than just approaching it theoretically. It pushes students to think more critically about how ideas and campaigns can translate into practical and scalable solutions, especially within an impressive global business like L’Oréal.  

My degree has without a doubt helped me in this project - studying marketing has helped me approach the challenge from a strategic consumer-brand perspective. It has helped me understand everything I could possibly need to about the process, such as understanding behaviour, identifying trends, and thinking about how brands communicate and why they should do this a certain way to stand out in such a saturated market. 

Throughout my studies at Strathclyde studying marketing, I've had the opportunity to benefit from workshops, guest speakers and industry focused modules to see how brand operate in practice. Experiences like these made taking part in Brandstorm feel like a natural extension of my learning! It also allows you to get creative, and I would recommend that those who do participate in future to have fun with it - there are no limits, it's a great hands-on experience and a great opportunity to learn and work within a team! 

I know other Strathclyde marketing students signed up to this challenge this year too but I am actually in a group of non-Strathclyde students. One of my team members goes to  Exeter University and the other goes to University of London and we’re all from different backgrounds too. This has been a very rewarding process as I learnt so much from them and vice versa - we were able to create something far more developed than we would have been able to individually. 

Following submission, all entries are reviewed by L'Oréal at a national level and shortlisted teams will progress to the semi-finals in London where teams are expected to present their concept in depth - and this comes with the opportunity to progress to the finals in Paris! We are still currently in the review stage but hopefully we progress through the competition – regardless, just being involved has been eye-opening, a chance to put my learning into practice and an opportunity to network with peers from different backgrounds at other universities. 

About Mirran Boyle

Mirran Boyle is currently in her Honours year studying Marketing and Human Resource Management at Strathclyde Business School.