Your idea must leave an impact within 5 minutes -By second runners-up of L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020 from IIM Kozhikode
Our strategy was to focus on the pain points in the customer journey that prevents development of sustainable habits amongst consumers. After identification of pain points, our team brainstormed on a number of ideas and narrowed it to around 4 solutions in the initial round. In the nationals, our initial strategy was to present our 2 unique and innovative ideas. However, after receiving valuable feedback from L'Oréal mentors, we decided to present only one of our ideas in an impactful manner which would help them visualize the process.
We spent a lot of time discussing the problem statement in order to give our presentation a proper flow and structure. We had multiple iterations in our presentation before the finale. One of the challenges faced by our team was to impactfully communicate our idea within 5 minutes. We also spent multiple nights discussing our idea from different angles to make it scalable, implementable and feasible for L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020.
The well-structured competition
Top 10 teams made it to the finale. Teams from IIT Madras, FMS and IIM Kashipur had some really great ideas. The simplicity of their ideas was their USP. The technical aspects covered by IIM Kashipur were interesting while the visualization journey of IIT Madras was inspiring.
The competition was well structured and communicated to the participants. Mentorship round and dry runs before the L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020 finale helped us in refining our final deck before the presentation. The entire process was very well organized and was executed seamlessly, the L'Oréal HR Team helped all the participants out at every stage. Because it was a virtual finale, the effortless execution left us amazed. The judgement quality was extremely fair with the jury consisting of top executives from every domain. We feel that the two teams who won the first two positions deserved to bag those titles and found the entire process extremely transparent. The jury asked relevant questions regarding the real-life execution of ideas presented by the teams.
Learnings and takeaways
Apart from learning a lot about the need to be sustainable and the impending crisis that the world is facing, we also developed some innovative ideas on how to tackle these problems in a way that is actually feasible and scalable. We also learned to think about our idea from different perspectives before actually presenting it. After listening to the presentations of different teams, we gained different perspectives on how to approach a problem and how to present the same in an innovative manner.
We also learned about the awareness levels amongst consumers about sustainability and the urgent need to change these habits. We understood the Sustainability Goals of L'Oréal for 2030 and appreciated the efforts undertaken by the world's number 1 beauty company. It is inspiring to see the kind of targets that L'Oréal has achieved and that it plans to achieve in the future.
Awesome moments from the competition
We had several awesome moments right from the time we played the quiz to the moment we were announced as the second runners-up of L'Oréal Sustainability Challenge 2020. One such special moment was when we made it to the top 10 teams that reached the finals.
The biggest moment came for us when we stumbled upon the idea of actually playing the game that we were proposing live in front of the jury. We felt that this idea would be extremely unique and would grab the attention of the jury. Post this, we reached a direction on how to proceed and present our idea. Our mentors further refined the idea. We feel this idea led us to believe that if we execute the plan perfectly, we will actually be able to win it. The drive we felt after this idea was something that we had never felt.
The extraordinary team
We are a group of friends coming from diverse fields. Many people told us that we should not team up with friends for competition but it was a pleasure working with them. It helped us understand each other better and play to our strengths. It was easier to coordinate and express our ideas without any fear of judgement.
During the entire process, we as a team learned to work together and resolve differences in an amicable manner. We also learned how to put across our ideas in an impactful manner within a short duration of time. The experience was one of a kind.
It was difficult to coordinate virtually but the late-night brainstorming sessions with several cups of coffee is something that we would always cherish. We could really bond despite being miles away from each other and from the campus. The experience was also made smooth by L'Oréal through constant guidance. We did have several conflicts and differences of opinion.
However, knowing each other helped us talk about these differences in a free manner and actually spend hours debating on the way forward. These sessions were extremely fruitful as they brought out the best ideas and enabled us to critically analyze our own solutions, ensuring that we were satisfied with the ideas that we were proposing. We feel it helped us cover all bases and answer all the jury questions in a satisfactory manner.