The first ever Coca Cola Hackathon to be held in the UK took place at Westminster Business School over the weekend 16th-17th of February. On Saturday morning Coca Cola Enterprises (CCE) announced their brief which was to create original and innovative digital ideas aiming to influence the buying behaviour of Bella Italia and Cafe Rouge customers.
The competing 22 teams (a total of 97 students from the Westminster Business School, School of Electronic and Computer Science and School of Media Art and Design) were given 24 hours to form their ideas, meet the requirements and develop a solution.
This was consequently presented on Sunday in front of a panel of Coca-Cola Executive Judges and the Digital Marketing Manager of Tragus Group (operator of Bella Italia & Cafe Rouge) and University of Westminster academics (including our own Keith Patrick, Ioannis Christodoulou and, of course, myself).
The teams were judged on their solution’s innovation and originality, suitability for the given objectives and overall potential.
And the winners are……
1st place (£1000) – Fortitude, BA Marketing Communications – Logan Nolin, Eddieta Mensah, Anna Batchelor , Mara Pertrides and Bruna Goncalves
2nd place – Mind Space, MA Marketing Communications – Ankit Joshi, Ryo Saputaara Limijaya, Natnalin Thananan, Malogorzata Antkowiak and Chanur Pattanapitoon
Most Innovative – Three Marketeers, BA Marketing Communications – Carolina Sarmiento-Orti, Besjana Madani, Elizabete Guerra
Best Team – Three Forces, MA/MSc Marketing Management – Duygu Ucan , Gabriel Cabral and Laurence Kemp
The event was widely covered over social media, from YouTube videos through to Twitter feeds with many photos (#UoWCCEhackathon).
You can see the winning team’s Harlem Shake video here:
The event created an amazing energy here at Marylebone amongst students and staff throughout the weekend.
Congratulations to the winning teams!!!
We would like to finish this blog post with a quote from the winning team Fortitude and Logan.
“Our group’s journey to the finish line was challenging, yet empowering and fun at the same time. Our most difficult decisions were deciding which crazy ideas we wouldn’t have time to present! The Coca-Cola executives were helpful in addressing any questions that we had and were overwhelmingly supportive during our presentation. This Coca-Cola Hackathon was an invaluable experience– one that we won’t be forgetting any time soon.
Thank you so much to all of the representatives from Coca-Cola, Tragus Group and of course, the University of Westminster academics.”
“The weekend spent with Coca-Cola Enterprises was the best one to date. Working on a live brief was so fun and exciting and enabled us to think on our feet in a real life situation as we only had 24 hours to complete the challenge. And as the presentations were only 5 minutes long we had to present our ideas short, sweet and straight to the point. I do think the unlimited supply of Coca-Cola helped us (but not our teeth!) and the Twitter updates really kept us 22 teams connected (which sort of felt like a community) and with the CCE (as we Tweeted them if we needed help with the brief).
All in all we had so much fun and it was such an amazing experience. Thanks to uni for inviting Coca-Cola Enterprises and thanks to CCE for taking time to come in and offering us the opportunity.”
Post written by Fefie Dotsika
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Hi, thanks a lot for this opportunity. It was a fantastic experience. Great idea by Coca Cola Enterprises and University of Westminster. Looking forward to seeing one of the campaigns being executed by coca cola and its partners.
Well managed by UOW!
A huge thank you to all of the Coca-Cola representatives, Tragus Group and the University of Westminster academics! This was a phenomenal experience and we had an amazing time! THANK YOU!
Massive thanks!
Great opportunity and loads of fun planning, shooting and editing the video!
Best team (three forces) representative here.
Gabriel C
[…] students to get a first-hand experience on applying what we study in classrooms in the real world. Coca Cola Digital Hackathon was one of the valuable opportunities. In February 2012 the students of the University of […]