2nd Annual Advanced Analytics Hackathon

Mindshare’s advanced analytics team organized its second annual virtual hackathon for college students, challenging them to create a media plan for two hypothetical perfume brands in 24 hours. The assignment included data analysis, modeling, media strategy and more.

Last month, we invited 21 graduate students from three schools (Zickling School of Business at Baruch College, Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University, and Lubin School of Business at Pace University) to compete in a virtual hackathon. 

After being given datasets and briefed on their project, in 4 teams, they collaborated and were tasked with presenting their ideas on how a perfume brand can grow their business and how they should plan its media. 

The teams had 24 hours to put together their ideas and present to a group of esteemed judges, who were data and analytics experts from Mindshare, Eightbar, GroupM and BBC. 

The winning team was from Fordham University. Their leveraged the provided dataset to tell a consistent and convincing story of who our target audience should be, how to reach to them, and what the optimal media plan to drive growth in the next year is. They presented their findings with confidence, professionalism and passion.

Congratulations to Phuong Tran, Katrina Velilla, Marielle A. Rivera, Shefali Gupta, Nithin Bhardwaj, Meet Dave and Aditya Gupta! And thank you to everyone who took part from all the universities. 

Judges were really impressed by the teamwork they demonstrated, and the level of work in the 24 hours they had to put a presentation together. Kudos to the winning team - we're thrilled to the knowledge in our evolving media analytics world.

Connect with our judges:

• Ikechi Okoronkwo, Head of Business Intelligence & Analytics at Mindshare
• Fabio Giraldo, Head of Advanced Analytics at Mindshare
• Bhomik Chandna, Director of Analytics at EightBar
• Anthony Miyake, Chief Economist at GroupM
• Zip Nguyen, BBC Senior Leadership Team Advisor
• Pratush Gupta, Head of Data & Analytics Services at GroupM

As Ikechi puts it, “this Virtual Hackathon is a great opportunity for the participants to get a sneak peek of what it takes to operate as an analyst in the media and marketing industry. Additionally, it helps us to identify the best talent to join our ever-growing team of world-class media analysts and consultants." Students from the winning team will be offered interview opportunity at Mindshare or other GroupM agencies. 

Alex Yifan He organized the Hackathon with support from Yanran Li, Milin Desai, James Chalfant and Joanna Song.