It’s late as I walk through the empty city streets. A bodega, bank, hospital, and stores rise around me, silhouetted by glowing purple and blue light. I pass a fitness club and the faint smell of eucalyptus wafts by. Soon, these streets will be bustling, full of people from a hundred different backgrounds. I give the city one last look before heading out.
It’s October 13, 2025 - the night before Dreamforce. Welcome to Agentforce City.
From a distance, it’s breathtaking. Up close, it’s thousands of invisible decisions executed by dozens of creatives, designers, producers, and construction partners. Storytelling, design, fabrication management…an experience that’s whimsical, unique, and connected. Here’s how the team made it happen.
Bringing the city to life with experiential immersive design
It’s hard to imagine how massive this city is without being there. But here’s an idea:
A footprint the size of a football field and a half. Filled with different environments, activations, and structures to create an unbroken cityscape of experience.
17+ unique customer environments. Physical storefronts to match each customer’s branding and energy. Each activation comes with a digital element showing how that brand leverages Salesforce’s AI platform, Agentforce, to drive success.
1 central industry activation tower. A 14-foot steel structure with interactive touchscreens where attendees initiate their personalized journey through the city.
Salesforce on Salesforce space. A center for telling the Agentforce AI story, with large structures made of metal and motion storytelling content.
3 enormous pagodas. Representing the Agentforce powergrid and denoting the industry demo zone with 32 stands.
57,000 collectable pins. Customized to each of the brand activations, distributed at the storefronts after each demo.
20+ dedicated team members. Producers, creative directors, designers, developers, and tech lead, not to mention the fabrication partners, contractors, and everyone else who made this happen.
Designing full immersive experiences
The goal was anything but simple: Connect over 17 unique customer stories and spaces into a single cohesive world.
We started with storytelling. The team designed each storefront to turn a brand story into a physical experience, using light, sound, scent, and texture to make the technology feel human and real. Without formal brand books to lean on, we pieced each customer space together from what we could research: websites, photos, even visits to real locations. Together, we stitched it all together to create a cohesive and immediately identifiable experience.
The industry activation tower tied it all together, guiding attendees through personalized journeys based on their industry from the moment they badged in.
Even the smallest choices served that sense of recognition and cohesion: the purple glow everywhere Agentforce powered the story, the eucalyptus scent in the Equinox gym space, the hum of a custom soundscape that made the city feel alive.
Cities aren’t meant to be passive experiences. So we sprinkled in moments of engagement and delight:
An AR photo booth for DeVry University that generated LinkedIn-ready profile pics for attendees
A home design game for Lennar that let people arrange their own floor pan on a touchscreen
A first-aid kit giveaway at the UChicago Med activation
A personal disco that kicked off when the One.NZ demo ended
Salesforce-branded charms and personal engravings for 400 lucky attendees at the Pandora kiosk
A personalized Pepsico bodega display based on badge scan and a surprise bag of chips gift post-demo
A secret, golden pin attendees got once they’d collected enough pins from around the city
Translating creative strategy to reality
Nothing about this city came together by accident. Every detail, from the light, the sound, the façade material and texture, the quality of the structures, was the result of creative and production working shoulder to shoulder. New additions and shifting specs meant we frequently had to adapt fast. But our team was tight and we always made it work, even turning around one design from proposal to approval in 24 hours.
Nothing short of 100% alignment and attention to detail would have cut it. Not for an event this important and an activation this complex. It had to feel real. Anything less would have fallen flat.
Crafting experiential that actually feels real - and lasts
With something this cool, this magical, there was no way we were designing Agentforce City as a single-use experience. From the start, we engineered every structure to be durable, movable, and reusable as much as possible. That meant choosing aluminum framing and steel supports over flimsier options. The storefronts, tower, and pagodas were made to be modular, making them easy to move and adapt. Whether rebuilt or repurposed, the city was built to live on.
Even the brand details had a second life in mind, with excess food items and materials donated to local organizations once the event was over.
Making AI-driven tech feel intuitive
AI and especially Agentic AI are infinitely easier to understand when you can actually see it. That’s what we wanted people to experience inside Agentforce City. At the PepsiCo bodega, a screen tracked real-time inventory and offered instant promotions when stock ran low. At Engine Travel, bookings adjusted and rebooked in seconds. And at the Heathrow Airport, the system guided passengers, anticipating their needs before they even asked. Each story turned theoretical value into something you could immediately get.
Beyond simple education or even demos, these were small, satisfying moments of connection. You could watch people light up as the technology clicked for them. For the B2B audience of attendees, that meant truly understanding how their own customers and employees might live with these tools day to day. Getting inspired. Going home, ready to push the envelope.
Delivering an experiential activation beyond client dreams
It’s late again. The streets are quiet. The lights have dimmed, the pins are gone, and we’re cleaning up the city. I still catch a whiff of eucalyptus as I stroll through the empty city. There’s a tangible sense that something special just happened here.
It’s hitting…the months of planning, the late nights, the precision, and trust that held it all together. We built this city for Salesforce, but also for ourselves. For the pride of knowing that we can take something wildly ambitious and make it real, down to the smallest stand and sound.
We built something worth experiencing. More importantly, we built something worth remembering.
