A peek behind the curtain at Hackathon 2021

For the second year in a row, Criteo teams from around the world teamed competed virtually during an intense 48-hour period dedicated to stretching the boundaries of innovation. Members from 4 of the winning teams share tips on what makes a successful combination.

What were your teams’ projects and their impact on Criteo?

YunYun: The tongue-in-cheek name for our project is, “Make meetings great again!” It’s an Outlook plug-in that automates steps common to all meetings, reducing pain points and increasing efficiency. As a scrum master responsible for getting the most out of meetings, I adored the idea when another team member proposed it and saw the enormous potential of making the tool available company wide. Did you know Criteo had 63,000 Zoom sessions…just in March?!

Pierre: Our team created an app to make Criteo’s development pipeline transparent to us all, providing multiple perspectives on projects in the pipeline and early warning about those running into problems. When one project goes down, it risks derailing hundreds of others.

Shohei: Our project measures how much more brand recognition is brought to the client from the survey-embedded banners of Criteo's upper funnel awareness campaigns. We’re about to test it with our first client. We’re also working with our EMEA colleagues who were working on something similar to make this into an actual product!

Connor: We looked at how existing Criteo assets like our shop, per graph could be monetized to grow 1st party revenues through sponsored product listings. Our project addresses the industry-wide departure from 3rd party cookies, helping Criteo navigate the post-cookie world with a solution not easily replicable by competitors who can’t match our customer user data.

How did you make remote collaboration work?

Pierre: We stayed on Zoom 3 straight days. We talked together at the beginning of each day to plan, then worked autonomously but remained connected like a virtual office.

Connor: To encourage thinking outside the box, it’s important to keep things light and fun. We had lots of free-flowing ideas, played with our Zoom backgrounds during our team lunches and avoided the stress of giving ourselves too many deadlines and deliverables.

Shohei: Yes, having fun was really important as was finding a way for each member of the team to contribute in their unique way. We shared the same vision of what we wanted to do, made sure everyone felt comfortable with the tasks they took on and shared a lot of laughter.

YunYun: We applied agile principles, splitting up into two groups to leverage our respective expertise. And, we had an Open, “maybe-we-should-try-that” mindset in which everyone’s ideas were welcomed.

What does “Turn It Up” mean for you?

Connor: It means not letting an idea gather dust, putting words into action and walking the talk.

Pierre: It’s like removing the burners so that we can run full out to achieve a project in 2-3 days.

Shohei: I’m usually the one that's controlling the music at friend's parties, so I associate it with cranking things up a notch. We’re challenged to go one step further and do something that's outside our comfort zone.

Favorite moment?

YunYun: When we were mentored by a Marketing colleague on presenting our project – it was really useful, and we applied all of their advice.

Connor: Seeing all of the hard work of the other groups, which was pretty impressive -- and our team lunch!

Pierre: Bringing all of the pieces together that we had developed separately – and seeing that it worked -- our Together value in action!

Shohei: Yes, the feeling of being a team was really strong for us to. After we realized we'd won, all the raw emotions came spilling out. We were all just so grateful for each other and it amplified the feeling of closeness – something much-needed in today’s world that often feels so divided