L’Oréal’s annual Brandstorm competition is a talent acquisition program in disguise

What’s the real value in a good pitch? For the world’s largest cosmetics company, it’s the brain behind it.

Each year, L’Oréal hosts its Brandstorm innovation competition, where teams of three young professionals present pitches that address one of the conglomerate’s business needs. Through the competition, which wraps in mid-June, top teams get the opportunity to work with experts at L’Oréal to develop their pitches and learn more about the company’s business processes. While the competition may seem product-focused, the cosmetics giant actually views it as a lucrative talent acquisition opportunity.

The winning team is awarded with a three-month program at L’Oréal’s Paris headquarters, during which they can test their project’s viability under the tutelage of the company’s experts. They’re also hired into the company’s management trainee program. Even some of those who don’t win walk away with a prize: L’Oréal hires as many as 500 competition participants each year.

“Brandstorm is both a recruitment tool and an image and reputation tool,” Michael Kienle, L’Oréal’s global VP of talent acquisition, whose team oversees the competition, said. “It’s a touch point, and the most important touch point for L’Oréal with young talents annually.”

Rooted in business. The competition has changed significantly since the first contest in 1992 (which was then called The Marketing Award). When Kienle started his talent acquisition career as a recruitment and campus manager for L’Oréal Germany in 2001, Brandstorm attracted a few hundred participants, primarily focused on European markets, he told HR Brew.

It’s grown significantly since then. In 2026 alone, it attracted more than 380,000 registrants from 64 countries, up from just 40,000 when Kienle stepped into his current role in 2021. The competition has also evolved beyond its original marketing roots, now focusing on the holistic business case around a pitch, Kienle said, noting the competition focuses on “the 360 vision around a product, around the category, and also around services that we provide to the end consumer at L’Oréal.”

The talent acquisition team is challenged with ensuring alignment between the competition and the business’s needs. In recent years, the pitch prompt has rotated between L’Oréal’s four major business divisions: consumer products, luxury products, dermatological beauty, and professional products. Last year’s topic, for example, was male beauty, to meet the needs of the consumer products division, while this year’s was the future of luxury fragrance, for the luxury products division, capitalizing on the recent fragrance boom.

“It’s always a topic that our business teams, our marketing teams, our tech teams need to crack,” Kienle said of choosing a yearly subject. “And I think that’s probably one of the strengths of Brandstorm, and what makes Brandstorm extremely attractive to students, is that they’re actually working on a real case, in real time, together with the business teams.”

A win-win. The competition seems to have been a talent acquisition success for L’Oréal. Competitors have been hired across the business, including in marketing, commerce, and tech, Kienle said. Many of the company’s top leaders participated in Brandstorm before joining the company, including the CEO of L’Oréal Vietnam, the CMO of L’Oréal France, and head of the company’s UK luxury product division.

The competition has also helped with employer branding and candidate experience, as competitors who aren’t recruited immediately have joined the company later in their careers (though Kienle said it’s difficult to track exactly how many are recruited years later).

“Without Brandstorm, I think we would lose a lot in terms of reputation, and in terms of touch points with very strong junior talents,” Kienle said.

But it’s also beneficial to the competitors who get exposure to the inner workings of the company while developing professional skills.

In an interview with HR Brew, the winners of this year’s competition—graduates of the Parsons School of Design and Fashion Institute of Technology, who pitched portable, biodegradable, and alcohol-free perfume sheets—said working with professionals at L’Oréal deepened their understanding of product development, and helped them learn about their field in new ways.

“We met up to nearly 10 professionals across all different fields internally at L’Oréal, who gave us such valuable and helpful feedback, and rounding out our project in ways that we hadn’t even thought of before,” Christine Lin, one of the winners, who majored in cosmetics and fragrance marketing, said. Working with these experts and learning about their careers at L’Oréal meant competitors “all learned so much about this company through this project as well,” she added.

Even those who don’t win or land a gig can walk away with valuable experience, Kienle said.

“You don’t even have to win. [By simply] participating in Brandstorm, you put it on your CV and it’s almost as if you’ve done an internship at L’Oréal,” Kienle said. “It’s a door opener, even for those who we cannot recruit directly at L’Oréal.”