It all started with a huddle of five multiplied by 5,000 and more ideas that are making waves in the digital world. Friends before partners, the dynamic five behind the Filipino independent agency The Huddle Room continue to inspire the spirit of bayanihan to deliver excellent work year after year.
Such inspiration has created a strong culture of collaboration and helping each other to achieve a common goal: disrupt the status quo.
Through its five years of doing business, the Huddle Room succeeded in transforming itself from a mere media consultancy group to a leading full-service and digital communications agency.
How this success came about can be traced back to a bayanihan of five composed of friends and managing partners Dimples Cruz, Julia Garcia, Reena Robles, Patricia Dizon, and Eugene Manalo. Bayanihan is a Filipino term that refers to unity and cooperation in a community to achieve a shared goal. Five years ago, they shared a common vision: to build a fully owned and independent local agency at the height of big multinational firms dominating the industry.
“We just wanted to keep it small but profitable,” shares Dimples Cruz, Managing Partner and Chairman of The Huddle Room.
But growing big has been unstoppable. From a table of five to a full floor of 50 and more, The Huddle Room has evolved to be on top of its game especially in the digital race. It has maintained its competitive edge as one of the frontrunners in the digital business through numerous award-winning online campaigns.
“We are evolving as digital advertising people,” says Eugene Manalo, one of the founding members and managing partners of The Huddle Room. “We are, and maybe ahead of the industry in terms of measuring the impact of online platforms like influential marketing and social media. We keep pushing ourselves to come up with innovative ideas to wow the digital world.”
From 2013 to date, the agency has achieved an impressive growth of +389% in brands through organic and new business wins. Only three years into this venture, The Huddle Room became the first Philippine agency to win the Global Native Advertising Awards (Gold) Best Use of Print for National Bookstore and Best Omni Channel Strategy for Belo Baby (Silver). For 2018, The Huddle Room was shortlisted for the Global Native Agency of the Year in this year’s edition of Global Native Awards along with three others in the shortlist.
Managing partner Julia Garcia also cited collaborating closely with tech giants like Facebook and Google through continuous learning to keep up with their changing platforms. “We work closely with these big tech companies and we have been recognized for the impact of our online campaigns.” enthuses Julia.
Managing partners of The Huddle Room
On the same year, The Huddle Room also bagged the 2016 Campaign SEA Best Experiential Marketing (Silver), On to 2017, the agency continued to make a mark globally and regionally with big wins like Campaign SEA Best Experiential Marketing (Silver) and Campaign SEA Philippine Independent Agency (Bronze) together with two other finalists in Best New Business Development Team in SEA and Digital Agency in the Philippines. The Huddle Room also reaped two Bronzes in Global Native Awards in Berlin for Best Use of Influencer (National Book Store) and Best in Programmatic for Systane.
Locally, The Huddle Room also made a strong initial showing by being a finalist for six categories in the 21st Campaign Agency of the Year (AOY) Awards in 2017: Best in Digital Creative and Effectiveness, Best in Digital Media Excellence, Best in Media Creativity, Best in Media Business Management, Best in Activation Execution, and Best in Activation Effectiveness.
Number five indeed plays a significant role for the agency. This year, The Huddle Room made its five-year mark in the business with a yearlong celebration starting March 1 as its foundation day.
Fuelled by five friends with diverse strengths and skills, all of them agreed what made the business thrive in five words: integrity, humility, adaptability, resilience and relentlessness.
