City Rally: Turning a Walk Through the City Into a Team Experience

There is something brilliant about getting a team out of a meeting room and into a city.

People relax. Conversations happen more naturally. Different personalities start to come out. And suddenly, the person who is usually quiet in a meeting is the one with the brilliant idea, while the colleague who always takes charge discovers that someone else has a completely different talent.

That is what we love about a city rally.

It is not simply a treasure hunt with an app. It is a team challenge designed around the people taking part.

We build every rally from scratch, creating the route, challenges, atmosphere and technology around the particular group, the city and what the client wants the experience to achieve.

And because every team is different, every rally is different.

Everyone gets to bring something to the team

The best city rallies are not about having the smartest person in the room.

They are about having the right people for the right moment.

One challenge might need someone who notices small details. Another might need a natural communicator who is happy to approach a stranger. Another might require logic, creativity, quick thinking, negotiation or simply the ability to make everyone laugh when the team is stuck.

That is where the team building really happens.

People get to know each other in a completely different way. They discover talents they did not know their colleagues had. They see different personalities emerge. And because everyone is working towards the same goal, those discoveries happen naturally rather than through forced team building exercises.

The result is a couple of hours of laughter, competition, discovery and genuine interaction.

Fully customised. Not a package with your logo on it.

Our city rallies are built specifically for each customer and each participating group.

That can mean creating completely different routes for different teams, adapting the difficulty and style of the challenges, incorporating company themes or messages, or designing challenges around the city itself.

The app is customised too, and every participant plays it from their own phone. Nobody is handed a separate device to carry around, and nobody needs to gather at a check-in desk between challenges to see what’s next.

Teams receive their own access and can follow their route, receive challenges, submit photos and videos, collect points and follow the leaderboard as the rally develops, all from whatever phone is already in their pocket.

The interface is deliberately simple and intuitive. Nobody needs a ten minute technology briefing before they can start having fun. Hand someone their phone back with the app open, and they’re already playing.

What people remember is the city, the challenges and, most importantly, what happened between the people in their team.

Two groups. Two completely different rallies.

For 220 sales people from HeadBox in Lisbon, we created a large scale city challenge that got teams moving through the city, communicating, competing and discovering Lisbon along the way. With more than 200 participants each following the rally from their own phone, the challenge had to work at scale while still giving every team its own experience.

For a German pharmaceutical company with 90 doctors in Porto, the approach was completely different. The challenges and route were created to suit the group, giving participants opportunities to interact, work together and enjoy the city while building connections outside their normal professional environment.

Same concept.

Completely different experience.

That is exactly how we think it should be.

The city becomes part of the team

Lisbon, Porto or anywhere else, the city is not just a backdrop.

It becomes part of the game.

A beautiful square can become a stage for a creative challenge. A tiny local shop can become part of a mission. A historic building can hide a clue. A street musician, performer or local character can suddenly become an unexpected part of the team’s journey.

And because teams are actually out there experiencing the city together, phones out only to check the next challenge rather than to escape into a screen, the memories tend to stick.

Years later, people might not remember the conference room where they spent the morning.

They remember the ridiculous video they made in Lisbon.

The challenge nobody thought they could solve.

The colleague who unexpectedly became the team’s secret weapon.

Or the moment they realised they were in first place and had to run for the next checkpoint.

A common goal brings people together

That is ultimately why we like city rallies so much.

They give people a reason to interact without forcing interaction.

They create situations where different personalities and talents naturally become useful. They give teams a common goal, a little competition and plenty of opportunities to laugh together.

And when the challenge ends, the team has not just walked through a city.

They have experienced it together.

They have learned something about each other.

And quite often, they have discovered that the people they work with are a lot more interesting than they realised.

That is what a city rally should be.

Not a treasure hunt.

Not a list of tasks.

A shared adventure, built around your people, and carried in their pockets the whole way through.