You know that feeling when you wake up on Christmas morning, or when you buy one drink at the vending machine but two fall out instead? Or better yet, when you find out that the girl you have liked for months has finally broken up with her boyfriend? Yeah well add all those together, times it by any multiple of a thousand, and BAM… that is what it feels like to hear “The team that will represent the United States at the international Brandstorm competition in Paris is… Brigham Young University!!”
So how here’s how we, three aspiring creatives – Summer Holm, Kylie Cox, and myself, Hawken Vance – made our way into the ranks of the L’Oreal international Brandstorm competition to be held in Paris this summer.
Eight months ago L’Oreal came to BYU and met with students, filling the Varsity Theater at Brigham Young University, and brought us a challenge. The challenge was this year’s Brandstorm brief: “How to get men into salons.”
Students broke up into groups of three to work on the brief. Over twenty groups signed up for their chance to present their ideas to L’Oreal and submitted pre-case studies to be considered to advance to campus finals.
I was sitting in a creative portfolio building class one day when Summer Holm came and sat in the seat next to me (for the first time that semester) and “casually” brought up Brandstorm asking if I wanted to be on a team. I said yes, and I told her I was kind of a package deal and that Kylie Cox would definitely be on our team as well, which marked the birth of “Team Swagger!”
From the first meeting that we had together as a group, after brainstorming and coming up with the theme of our campaign, our enduring motto became, “Yeah… we’re going to Paris.”
With Paris in mind, combined with three competitive personalities, we worked endlessly on our concept, strategies, and presentation. We were in it to win it, even if that meant days and long nights of research, designing, and perfecting our ideas.
L’Oreal selected us and five other groups to present our ideas at the BYU campus finals last December. Each group had fifteen minutes to present their ideas to a panel of judges from L’Oreal Paris and L’Oreal USA. After presenting each team had five minutes to defend their ideas during a question and answer session with the judges.
All of the groups did a great job coming up with great ideas and presenting them during campus finals. After the judges deliberation they came back and announced Team Swagger as the team to represent BYU at the national competition in New York where we would compete against six others schools from around the nation.
We were stoked! L’Oreal flew the three of us out to their Headquarters on 5th Ave in New York to for a week to get to know L’Oreal as a company as well as to meet the coach from L’Oreal who would work with our team in preparing us for the national competition.
The trip was incredible and L’Oreal pulled out all the stops while we were there. They put us up in the incredible “W” Hotel and covered all of our trip expenses and even took us to dinner in the balcony of Grand Central Station on night. We also had the chance to do field research by visiting popular salons in NY and interviewing the salon managers. We received great insights on the trip from both the primary research we did as well as the time spent reviewing our presentation with our L’Oreal coach, Laure Lafforgue. We loved the experience and also became close friends with some of the other schools that we would be competing against in a few months.
Crunch time between February and April consisted of coming up with a new name for our product and revamping our entire presentation to match. With constant assignments between the three of us and meeting for hours a couple times a week, we were able to hammer out every little detail. From the ingredients that were going to be in each product to what font was going to be used in the presentation, we combed through every aspect.
Time was running out as we added last minute changes to the presentation and script while on the flight to New York. Nerves and anxiety were definitely running high during last minute test runs before the competition. We also found out at a luncheon that we would be the last ones to present. More nerves.
As the competition started we watched as teams had great product ideas and incredible presentations. Many times nervous glances were exchanged between Summer, Ky, and I as we watched everyone’s great presentations.
We were taken out and prepped before our presentation. Even more nerves. The three of us got together and decided that we had worked on this project for almost nine months, our ideas had become our little Brandstorm baby, and now it was time to just go out and have fun and let our personality show.
Fast-forward 15 minutes. WE NAILED IT!! It went so well! As we sat down from presenting and answering the judge’s questions we all looked at each other and knew that we had done the best that we had ever done before. We had no regrets about our presentation, and it was now in the hands of the judges.
The judges came back from making their decision and talked for a while as all of us sat their anxiously waiting to hear the results when she finally announced, “The team that will represent the United States at the international Brandstorm competition in Paris is… Brigham Young University!!”
The next ten minutes were pretty much a blur from all of the adrenaline and excitement as we were given trophies and congratulated by those in attendance. We were able to thank the judges and continued on cloud 9 for the rest of the night as we met with division heads and talent recruiters!
Afterwards, we went out for a celebration dinner with Jeff and were able to breathe in the reality of winning for next few hours. Still unable to fully grasp the fact that nine months of hard work, a big idea that three students had in a little room in the Brimhall building back in Provo, and the best strategic/creative group a guy could ask for – had led us to the opportunity to take our ideas to Paris!
Incredible.
I have no words for how lucky I am to have found the advertising program at BYU and to be a part of the BYU Adlab. It’s provided opportunities that I would have only been able to dream about early on during my 2 ½ year stint as a chemistry major. If you are creative and passionate – take my advice – drop your major, save years of stressing, and join the best major on campus… viva advertising!