Teams working on hacking the inside of the Vito van
A mobile business teaching children across Australia’s rural and remote communities to write code has been crowned the winner of Mercedes-Benz’ inaugural ‘Hack my Van’ competition.
The initiative was launched by the car manufacturer’s marketing team in partnership with creative agency, The Royal, as a way of engaging entrepreneurial small business owners and thinkers with its new Vito van. Six finalists were selected from a nominations process online to participate in a one-day hackathon on 6 August that saw them ‘hack’ the inside of the Mercedes-Benz utility vehicle.
Code Camp innoVito by Cobalt took out top honours for its efforts to teach children to write code. The initiative started in December 2013 and over the past 18 months has taught 8000 kids to write code in both public and private schools. The aim is to reach 100,000 students in the next 12 months, and Code Camp is already running classes in Arnhem Land with the assistance of the Foundation for Young Australians.
The team behind Code Camp won a new Vito van on the day, leading a pack that also included a biohacking lab, mobile pet photography studio, rubbish to product recycling van and on-demand 3D printing workshop.
The finalists were judged by several innovators and celebrities including award-winning chef and restauranteur, Shane Delia, Mercedes-Benz MD for A/NZ, Diane Tarr, Huffington Post’s Cathy Anderson and Unlockd and Tribe advisor plus co-founder of Smiling Mind and LaunchVic board member, Jane Martino.
“Code Camp is on a mission to teach Australian students to code, and build engagement and a passion for technology,” said its co-founder, Ben Levi. “To have our own Mercedes-Benz Vito, Code Camp will be able to expand a lot faster to teach more students in more remote areas, and it will allow us to run pop-up events all over the country to raise awareness.”
Mercedes-Benz marketing manager, Katherine Gracey, previously told CMO the program was about extending its customer base outside of traditional trade sectors and highlighting the vehicle’s innovative technology make-up.
“We were blown away by the level of creativity and the brilliance of the business ideas we saw from the six finalists,” Tarr said. “This is precisely why we created this event as we are excited by the ideas and possibilities for how the Vito van can be reimagined to transform an existing business, or completely reinvented to create new businesses.”
In the third and final episode of our 3-part CMO50 video series exploring modern marketing and why it’s become a matter of trust, we’re delighted to be joined by Telstra’s former CMO and now digital services and sales executive, Jeremy Nicholas, and Adobe VP Marketing Asia-Pacific and Japan, Duncan Egan.
Flash back to the classic film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Television-obsessed Mike insists on becoming the first person to be ‘sent by Wonkavision’, dematerialising on one end, pixel by pixel, and materialising in another space. His cinematic dreams are realised thanks to rash decisions as he is shrunken down to fit the digital universe, followed by a trip to the taffy puller to return to normal size.
Why is it there is no shortage of leadership development materials, yet outstanding leadership is so rare? Despite having access to so many leadership principles, tools, systems and processes, why is it so hard to develop and improve as a leader?
As a nation united by sport, brands are beginning to learn money alone won’t talk without aligned values and action. If recent events with major leagues and their players have shown us anything, it’s the next generation of athletes are standing by what they believe in – and they won’t let their values be superseded by money.
Enterprisetalk
Mark
CMO's top 10 martech stories for the week - 9 June
Great e-commerce article!
Vadim Frost
CMO’s State of CX Leadership 2022 report finds the CX striving to align to business outcomes
Are you searching something related to Lottery and Lottery App then Agnito Technologies can be a help for you Agnito comes out as a true ...
jackson13
The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration
Thorough testing and quality assurance are required for a bug-free Lottery Platform. I'm looking forward to dependability.
Ella Hall
The Lottery Office CEO details journey into next-gen cross-channel campaign orchestration
Great Sharing thoughts.It is really helps to define marketing strategies. After all good digital marketing plan leads to brand awareness...
Paul F
Driving digital marketing effectiveness