News Corp Australia has chosen CHE Proximity as the first creative agency to take part in its NewsFoundry Hackathon. The 48-hour event, taking place in CHE Proximity’s offices on the 13 and 14 July, will mine opportunities for agencies and clients to reduce media spend wastage and innovate how campaigns are targeted.

Three teams from CHE Proximity, made up of developers, designers, creatives, planners and media buyers, will be joined by members of News Corp Australia’s innovation team to thrash out ideas. Influencer platform Hypetap has also been recruited by CHE Proximity to collaborate on the event.

The teams were provided with a brief two weeks prior to the Hackathon and will start with a “napkin sketch” of an idea, before hacking their solution down into a presentation for a panel of News Corp Australia and CHE Proximity judges.

“Every day at News Corp Australia we connect with millions of Australians, with content that engages real people in the real world,” said News Corp Australia’s head of commercial innovations, Nic Hodges.

“As a result we have a huge opportunity to use our insights, data, and expertise to benefit agencies and advertisers. We’re excited to bring NewsFoundry to CHEP to explore some of those opportunities.”

The planned session will be the first of News Corp Australia’s 48-hour Hackathon series focused on the creative industries. Previous Hackathons have seen News Corp connect with REA, Twitter and Samsung and have yielded workable solutions for these trades.

Creative director for CHE Proximity, Tommy McCubbin, is confident the team will strike gold this week.

“After 48 hours, we will have three ideas to help solve the problems keeping us up at night. Come pitch time, the teams are aiming to showcase prototypes that are ready to scale. The session format reflects how we endeavour to work; fast, efficiently, and with a mix of disciplines in the room.”

Key to the purpose of the session is creating solutions to benefit Australian brands advertising on platforms like news.com.au and News Corp Australia’s suite of TV channels and printed publications.

Michael Titshall, managing partner of CHE Proximity, said, “We are excited to work collaboratively with News Corp Australia and their NewsFoundry innovation framework to disrupt the way brands advertise.

“Front of mind is delivering a more effective use of marketing investment for our clients, which benefits everyone long-term.”

The Hackathon will act as an extension of Alchemy, CHE Proximity’s innovation workshop process which has resulted in the creation of previous ventures such as Life&Loan, ME Bank’s Mortgage Calculator and app research tool, Black Mirror.