Facebook, Ogilvy & Mather host three-day hackathon for South African creatives

Facebook and Ogilvy & Mather SA host young creatives. Image provided.

To help them develop their creative and client liaison skills, particularly when working with smaller organisations, they learnt how to create creative work with a limited budget and work against the clock to deliver a real-world execution.

“This initiative brought together two of the things we’re passionate about, helping small businesses to grow and developing the next generation of digital and creative skills in South Africa,” says Nunu Ntshingila, regional director of Facebook Africa.

The groups had ten days to produce their campaigns, in time to go live with ‘Cannected’, a Cannes event for local marketers that cannot attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

“This event was about empowering creatives to help small and medium businesses bring their stories to life and create magical customer experiences,” says Charmagne Mavudzi, marketing and communications manager at Ogilvy & Mather South Africa. “In a mobile-first country such as South Africa, digital platforms offer smaller businesses a way to market themselves to their communities in a scalable and personalised way.”