2037… L’Oréal is no longer making products, what will it be selling?
It was the topic of a week-long workshop to challenge traditional business models in the beauty industry with disruptive innovation.
The challenge is launched
On Monday 24 April, Brynhild Dumas (Director of Executive Education & Business Development, ESCP) and Marie Taillard (L'Oréal Professor of Creativity Marketing and Director of the Creativity Marketing Centre on the ESCP London campus) launched the challenge by thanking L’Oréal, a dynamic and well-known partner of ESCP and by encouraging the students coming from ESCP and IFM.
Françoise Sackrider (Programme Director) and Brad Fujimoto (in charge of the International Luxury Management MSc) at IFM, explained what Big Picture is.
This was the 7th session. Each year, Big Picture is a powerful learning tool which brings together students from IFM and ESCP. Students from both ESCP and IFM are projected into the heart of the creative process: they are asked to design and produce a video in a very short time.
It is also a highly multicultural challenge: students are Polish, Indian, Italian, Chinese, Spanish, Dutch, American, Lebanese and Brazilian… a mere 5 out of 53 students were French.
At the end of the week, one of the videos was selected as the winner by a panel that includes leading professionals.
As Marie Taillard said: "it is a totally unique experience that brings the L’Oréal Professorship to life. It is a great and effective opportunity to show how creative thinking can really benefit L’Oréal in a very tangible way."
She gave methodology input to help students be efficient in their working groups. Defining the problem should be a decisive step. Don’t get it wrong!
The idea of this challenge is to expose students to the everyday challenges facing the beauty business. What will happen in the next decade?
The workshop offers opportunities for exchanges between various different profiles, learning to work together on an innovative project and finalising it under the pressure of a tight deadline… such are the main learning challenges of the Big Picture project.
Be creative; think outside the box!
Borane Or (International recruitment, L’Oréal) introduced the challenge.
The idea of this challenge is to expose students to the everyday challenges facing the beauty business. What will happen in the next decade? Discover the challenge here!
Eliott Meyniel (Digital Project Manager, L’Oréal) presented the context and the main trends in the domain.
He gave numerous examples to demonstrate how the digital impact is crucial.
"There are 4.5 bn Google beauty-related searches per year, 14.8 bn beauty-related views on YouTube per year and 160 m “hard core” beauty addicts on Facebook".
The objectives of the Big Picture workshop for L’Oréal are to reinvent its marketing and content models to deliver the best in class consumer experience, micro-target the mass, optimise investments and go from products to beauty services.
The students were split into 10 teams of 5 to 6 students from the 2 schools and started work after lunch. The working groups spent a very long first day mainly devoted to defining the problem: a decisive step forward.
Days 2, 3, 4… time flew while students worked hard to meet their deadline.
From 9 am to 10 pm or even later, they were fully involved and focused.
All week they were supported by IFM coaches and the L’Oréal team involved in the project.
All were very impressed! Discover their feedback here.
D-DAY!
On Friday 28th April, 5 Jury members were invited to evaluate the groups.
Emilie Duquenne (Talent Acquisition Director) and Marie-Caroline Darbon (Director of Prospective Marketing) at L'Oréal, Laura Perrard (Founder & CEO, Journal du Luxe), Antoine Laumonier (Srategic Planner, Mazarine) and Stanislas Vandier ( Co-founder & CEO, Wired Beauty) sticked to these criteria: ability to propose a disruptive vision of beauty and cosmetics and a new business model for 2037, ability to translate a vision into a “lexicon” of ideas and images that will support the client’s strategic reflection, the overall consistency, credibility and creative impact of the proposal and performance of the team.
During the Q/A sessions, Jury members questioned the teams on business models, unique selling points, brand positioning, sustainability… making the experience realistic.
Emilie Duquenne thanked all the teams for their valuable input. “It was a futuristic challenge and you made it both real and forward-looking. You were all very good at understanding the future consumer’s insights. You tackled the topic with very strong convictions and went outside your comfort zone. To take risks is the best way to learn. We were most impressed by the high quality of your videos.”
Marie-Caroline Darbon announced the winning team, which was… Yena CHO (IFM), Sam ENGELHARD(IFM), Victoria Jarecka (ESCP), Nina MARSTON(IFM), Laëtitia SIDA (ESCP) and Jessica STEPHANOU (IFM) for their “Beauty of the Future” concept.
For Marie Taillard and Brad Fujimoto, Big Picture is firstly a learning process and a learning experience for our students.
"Big Picture represents a unique approach to experiential learning, as the students develop both soft and technical skills while working under pressure. They need to be able to hit the ground running, and to efficiently prioritize tasks amongst team members, some of whom they have never met before.
The project requires participants to strategize, think creatively and to influence others during its different phases… from the elaboration of the creative concept, through shooting and editing.
Indeed, the groups get to exercise their marketing mindsights all the while acquiring invaluable video production skills along the way."
During the closing cocktail party students shared their learning experiences.
Learn more about:
L'Oréal Professorship Msc in Marketing & Creativity MSC INTERNATIONAL FASHION & LUXURY MANAGEMENTCampuses