Nanyang Technological University’s Team Kryptonite Picked as L’Oréal Singapore’s Brandstorm 2015 Competition Winners

19 March 2014 – SINGAPORE – In a competition highly regarded for its rigorous approach, Team Kryptonite has emerged as the national winners of L'Oréal Singapore’s Brandstorm competition in 2015.

Brandstorm is the ultimate campus business simulation competition and has been running annually since 1992. This year the competition theme is “Let Innovation Take Off”, with L'Oréal Travel Retail and Lancôme forming the case study students had to tackle.

Students had to take on the role of an International Marketing Hub Director and analyse and propose a breakthrough innovation to the travel retail channel, regarded by L'Oréal as a sixth continent due to the size of its market, where beauty is the leading segment; to develop and ensure greater visibility for the Lancôme brand, which celebrates its 80^th anniversary this year.

80 teams comprising three students each registered for the competition in late 2014, with three teams from National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University selected as finalists in February 2015. Finalist teams were then mentored over a one-month period by L'Oréal’s travel retail and marketing staff to help them better understand the business and refine their proposals.

Chris Neo, Managing Director for Singapore says “L'Oréal Singapore celebrates its 25^th anniversary this year, and in marking this milestone, we take stock of what’s important to us, and what has contributed to our success. The two most critical ingredients to our success are our people and our innovations, and Brandstorm celebrates both. Through the competition, we identify and recruit young, marketing talents who are able to bring passion and innovative ideas into the company.”

Team Kryptonite is formed by Kenny Toh Chong Lun, 24, and twin sisters Karyn Ho Ling-Er and Kelly Ho Jie-Er, 22. Kelly also walked away with the Mediacorp Best Presenter Award.

The team will now go on to compete for the global title in Paris, France and stand a chance to win a €10,000 travel voucher. Student teams from 45 countries and 360 universities will be participating in the global competition on June 18.

Since 2000, Singapore National teams have featured in the top three of the global Brandstorm competition six times, and emerging as champions three of those times.