Sydney Showdown: FBM Interdisciplinary Team Excels in Marketing Analytics Hackathon
On September 5, the "Marketing Analytics Hackathon Challenge 2025," hosted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW), successfully concluded in Sydney. The competition attracted 27 teams from countries and regions including Australia, China, India, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. The cross-disciplinary team Starburst from the Faculty of Business and Management (FBM) of Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University (BNBU)—comprising Liang Shuang, Zhou Mier (Marketing Management), Xie Jiayun (Applied Economics), and Jiao Yuxi (Finance)—led by Dr. Luo Shuchan in Marketing Management, stood out and advanced to the final top six.
Starburst advanced to the final top six
With strong support from the Faculty, Starburst traveled to Sydney to compete against world-class institutions such as the University of New South Wales, Australian National University, the University of Melbourne, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (often called the “MIT of Korea”), and Vietnam’s top trade university, the Foreign Trade University. Facing this international arena, the team presented their analysis and creative solutions before a distinguished judging panel consisting of UNSW professors, representatives from TikTok, and NGO experts, ultimately securing 5th place in the competition.
The Marketing Analytics Hackathon Challenge is an international data analysis competition organized by UNSW. Structured as a hackathon, it is not a traditional paper or case contest but rather a time-limited, high-intensity challenge focused on solving specific data problems. Participants work with real-world datasets—in this case, TikTok video data related to climate topics—using data analysis, programming, statistical modeling, and visualization techniques to extract actionable business insights and propose data-driven strategic recommendations.
As first-time participants, Starburst delivered an impressive performance. Team leader Liang Shuang, a Marketing Management student, shared their reflections:
“It was a challenging yet rewarding journey.” The hackathon focused on climate communication, requiring teams to analyze a real TikTok dataset covering 1,597 video posts and 1,126 creators. Participants were asked to explore aspects such as content types, creator networks, or audience engagement to generate original, practical insights aimed at improving the effectiveness of climate-related messaging on social media.
Starburst team photo before the finals
Starburst consists of four final-year students. While their academic backgrounds were not directly tied to the coding and programming skills typically associated with hackathons, foundational training from courses like Business Analytics provided them with essential data processing abilities. Still, confronted with a real, complex, and high-pressure environment, the team admitted feeling “uneasy and anxious” initially.
Under pressure, teamwork became their strength. They leveraged their cross-disciplinary expertise: MKT students focused on data sensitivity and practical application, the AE member helped frame hypotheses and validation, and the FIN student contributed analytical perspective and business interpretation. Each applied classroom knowledge to a real-world challenge.
Guided by Dr. Luo Shuchan, the team continuously refined their models, learned new visualization tools, and applied Python programming, AI-assisted classification, and regular expressions to process data, identify content, and categorize creators. Notably, they introduced an “Influence Triangle” framework to systematically examine climate content dissemination across three dimensions: video format, hashtags, and creator type. Through multidimensional analysis, they identified optimal content design patterns.
Starburst members during final presentation at UNSW
“The final was not just a competition, but a valuable opportunity to engage directly with international academics and industry experts,” Liang Shuang recalled. Presenting confidently and responding steadily to questions from UNSW Business School professors, TikTok representatives, and NGO specialists, Starburst demonstrated the professional competence and global perspective of BNBU students.
Although this was the students’ first international hackathon, Starburst withstood the pressure and excelled in the intense competition and high-stakes presentation, earning honors for the university and paving the way for future participants. We look forward to and encourage more BNBU students to step onto the global stage, showcasing the excellence of BNBU with their expertise and creativity.
