Urban Hunt for Graduate Training: A Case Study

🕵️‍♂️ By Mike Holford | ✍️ 27th Feb, 2020

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Our brief

For this project, we were tasked with providing a fun and social session for Marks & Spencers' graduate recruits to get to know each other and their new company as part of a larger induction training conference.

 
The project

This project was a great opportunity for us to work on an event that looked to focus on the social side of Urban Hunt and its playful elements. The main emphasis was on using Urban Hunt as an informal activity that trainees could straightaway relate to and enjoy as an icebreaker with their peers.

We used staggered start locations to space teams out around the course and encourage each individual team to bond as a group, plus we included various pub stops to allow conversations to develop around and beyond the talking point the event provided. The trail route was designed to show off the area surrounding the conference venue in Greenwich, London with the secondary goal of enhancing company knowledge.

 

The cryptic nature of our signature clues is a tried-and-tested way of ensuring players need to collaborate to come up with answers, so we knew we wanted to embrace this style for this event. We implemented an assortment of wordplay including rhyming, anagrams and coded words to really get teams chatting. Picture clues included super zoomed in images teams had to locate to find their answer and there were even a couple of maths-based answers thrown into the mix.

One of my favourite parts of this project was coming up with ways to playfully present background on Marks & Spencers as a company interpersed with fun facts about the neighbourhood. We mainly did this through Did You Know facts accompanied by quirky GIFs, which were designed with humour to introduce the history, key products and achievements of the business. 

In my opinion, the power of visuals - especially animated media - cannot be underestimated in its capacity to hold attention, prompt emotion and boost engagement. For many people, Youtube videos, Instagram stories, Facebook memes and Tiktoks have become a daily means of communication and leveraging their appeal for an event not only entertains, but can provide invaluable lasting connections.   

 

Bonus rounds for extra points were another fun way in which we encouraged further player participation on this event. This included sending a video of the latest edition of the company's iconic TV advert and requesting in turn that each team create their own ad as a video submission. These kind of creative challenges are always a highlight and are so effective in getting players feeling invested together in a shared project. 

Video challenges in particular are also a personal favourite of mine, as I really love seeing the energy captured and how they provide a window on to each team's experience and dynamic. To top it off, they reliably provide amusement for organisers (including us!) and make great post-event content. Overall a really rewarding addition.

In summary, this event was a really fun one to be involved with. We were able to test our staggered starts concept on a large-scale (to great success!) and our focus on engaging visual content and video challenges is an area we definitely want to continue to grow going forward to ensure our events are as captivating as possible. 

 

Project feedback

Here's what Rebecca from Marks & Spencers had to said about their event:

"Urban Hunt were easy to work with from start to finish and extremely accommodating to our very specific requirements. Their attention to detail is outstanding! This was part of a really busy week for us, so it was a huge benefit that Urban Hunt representatives were around to introduce the event to our participants and then be present for the whole duration.The feedback from participants included ‘best evening ever’, ‘a great way to socialise with colleagues on an informal level’ and ‘this was so much fun’. We’ll definitely be continuing running an Urban Hunt year on year."

 

If this has piqued your interest in running your own training event, take a look at our custom scavenger hunts for training for more information, or contact us to discuss options that might work for you. We'd love to hear from you! Alternatively, we also offer custom events for a whole host of other occasions using the above features and more.

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