🕵️♂️ By Lauren Holford |
✍️ 26th Feb, 2020
Our brief
The main aim of this project was to inject excitement into APN Outdoor's site visits by getting clients from different agencies along with their sales rep to compete against others in an Amazing Race-style competition. Deployed in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, Australia.
The project
We loved working on this project both for its scope and the abundant inventive ideas that required creative solutions. From the initial outreach, we met with event organisers at their offices for a more detailed briefing and ideas session. Our project manager worked with organisers to develop the best of these ideas and liaise with the tech side of our business to feed back recommended features and solutions along with their expectations of time and cost for any new development.

Our trails are commonly completed on foot, but for this event players needed to cover a much larger area to be able to visit all site locations. APN Outdoor were able to work with their partner Uber for these events and we developed the ability to provide pre and post-question information text, so directions could be delivered to teams in the gameplay flow. We had never previously considered developing a car-based trail, but this ended up working so well, it's definitely something we would consider re-visiting in the future.


In a departure from our classic cryptic clues, the majority of questions for this event involved industry-specific sales content in a quiz-style format. From company stats questions with multiple-choice answers along with follow-up questions for bonus points to 'Who am I?' video questions featuring head office staff. A couple of riddles were included to keep players on their toes and our signature playful emojis were added throughout to keep things fun and fresh.

In addition to the knowledge-based challenges, various physical missions were also set around the course to really maximise engagement. From piecing together a giant QR code and submitting a photo of the end result as an answer, to recording a person saying a certain word without directly giving it to them (Articulate-style), carpool karaoke video submissions and creative selfies in front of company assets. Although these tasks required extra planning (and imagination!), they were brilliantly effective in building excitement and really took the event to the next level. Going forward, this is one area I wouldn't hesitate putting time and effort into on custom projects. The effort is rewarded and they definitely elevate the event.

Random spot prizes were awarded for certain activities, so teams that weren't in the lead were still motiviated to complete the challenge and ensure plenty of crowd-sourced media was captured for follow-up marketing projects. Plus, as if all that wasn't enough, there was also an ongoing-photo competition that required players to snap as many company-related advertisements as they could for extra points. The photo competition element really captured the imagination of some teams and drew a lot of attention to the prominence of some assets and the extent to which others were almost omnipresent across the city. Perhaps the major success of the event in terms of lasting outcomes for the host company?

For these challenges to take place we developed a variety of handy features. We were able to incorporate QR code image recognition as an answer type. A specifically-designed media verification dashboard allowed event organisers to live review video and image submissions and award or deduct points from each team. All media was also made downloadable from the dashboard so that it could be shared in a slideshow at the wrap-up drinks where the winners were announced and prizes awarded.

Overall, we found this project super rewarding, particularly for the creativity it required and inspired. It really underlined to us that the different uses of our system are limited only by imagination and that we have so many new and exciting ways it can be implemented that are still to be discovered. When working with other businesses, we love seeing how we can adapt our product to build their vision and this project really delivered on this front.
Project feedback
The initial Melbourne and Sydney events were so well-received, we subsequently held more events using the same model in Brisbane and Perth. Here's Cassie from APN Outdoor's take on things:
"Urban Hunt went above and beyond to pull off a monster task in a very short period of time. They are extremely skilled in the back end and a pleasure to communicate with on a professional level. The event itself has received incredible feedback and will continue to be a valuable tool for APN Outdoor moving forward. Equal parts educational and enjoyable, Urban Hunt executed this 100 person event across Sydney and Melbourne and were highly accessible for support throughout the entirety of both events. Thank you Urban Hunt, we’ll be in touch for our next event very soon."
Interested in running your own custom marketing event? Head over to our custom scavenger hunts for brand marketing for more information, or contact us to chat things through. We'd love to hear from you! Alternatively, we also offer various other custom events using the above features and more - whatever your vision, we'd love to help you make it a reality, so don't hesitate to get in touch!