INNOVATION IN BEAUTY TECHNOLOGICAL INFLUENCE GLOBAL
PARIS
By IFAB MEDIA - NEWS BUREAU - June 20, 2023 | 39 3 minutes read
L’Oréal has announced France’s ‘Caring 4 Beauty’ team as the winner of Brandstorm 2023, L’Oréal’s global, immersive learning competition for youth under 30. ‘Caring 4 Beauty’ won for their concept, URMODEL, inspired by the theme, ‘Crack The New Codes of Beauty’, referencing technology’s growing influence across the beauty industry. The selection was announced live from the Viva Technology conference in Paris.
In the finalist round of the competition, ‘Caring 4 Beauty’ competed against nine teams from Brazil, Chile, Mainland China, India, Kenya, Malaysia, the Middle East, Spain & Portugal, and Taiwan region. Each team pitched their AR, VR, AI and metaverse-inspired beauty concepts to the Brandstorm executive jury, for a chance to win a three-month business intrapreneurship at L’Oréal Groupe headquarters in Clichy.
The French team, represented by Inès Flammant, Marie Landrevie and Sophie Martinez, advanced to the top three, alongside teams representing Kenya and Malaysia. France’s URMODEL project was deemed the most innovative, tech-driven, sustainable, inclusive and feasible among all the Brandstorm 2023 concepts and crowned winner. URMODEL aims to deliver a hyper-personalized shopping experience by allowing anyone with a mobile phone to see themselves as the model on L’Oréal e-commerce websites. Consumers get a full, augmented beauty experience by being the face of their own beauty aspirations.
“Congratulations to Inès, Marie and Sophie of ‘Caring 4 Beauty’, whose passion for innovation and digital were the inspiration behind URMODEL,” said Jean Claude Le Grand, Chief Human Relations Officer, L’Oréal Groupe. “Each year, Brandstorm provides a unique learning opportunity, recognized with EOCCS1 certification and providing 100,000 people around the world with insight into career opportunities at L’Oréal. Brandstorm is an integral part of our Groupe, reinforcing both our employer brand and L’Oréal’s global ranking as the fifth2 most preferred company among students.”
Brandstorm is one of L’Oréal’s longest-running programs, dedicated to helping youth kickstart their careers. It celebrates its 31st anniversary with a record-breaking 92,000 people from 72 countries registered in the competition, and almost 700,000 participants in total since its launch in 1998. In partnership with Salesforce, Brandstorm provides vital digital upskilling and coaching for students and professors alike, through masterclasses developed by L’Oréal subject matter experts. Today, Brandstorm is integrated into the curriculum of almost 100 universities across the globe and is accredited by EOCCS as an online learning course.