Not your average day at work DDB’s annual Halloween bash

MANILA, Philippines — Because creative individuals are under constant pressure to deliver excellent work and craft unique experiences for brands, DDB Group’s Culture Hub continues to innovate engagement programs that allow its people to release stress in a constructive and fun way. 

Such activities are done for the comfort, improvement and enjoyment of its teams, helping keep morale, motivation, and collaboration through programs that promote overall holistic health, allowing it to have a sustainable work relationship with its people. 

The DDB PHL team craft themselves as characters from the beloved Disney film, Coco, and Plants vs Zombies.

One example is DDB Group’s annual Halloween, which may seem like just a simple dose of fun and escape but it belies the profound rationale underlying this activity.

Halloween has become their favorite holiday. The chance to suspend reality even just for a few hours by dressing up, decorating, and indulging in the tricks and treats of the holiday has become very appealing.

May the Force be with you, decree the Jedi masters of Ripple8 and Finance.

As a means to express themselves outrageously for a whole day, DDB Group developed the Halloween Design Challenge wherein year on year, companies are teamed up to transform the office hallways to become an interactive, walk-through experience for families and their children to enjoy. 

Because DDB Group is in the business of creativity, a day spent with their baby unicorns needs to be memorable. 

The Fantasy team are all dressed up as Super Mario, Pacman, Wreck-It-Ralph and other fantasy characters.

On its sixth year, this year’s Halloween theme was Comic Con, with four teams battling it out for the best design experience: Sci-fi, Horror/Crime, Fantasy and Superheroes. 

The DDB Halloween challenge requires strong leadership skills to rally multi-company teams to work together and create something for others to enjoy. 

Each year, the DDB teams engage in friendly competition to win the coveted, custom-designed Halloween Champions trophy named ‘Bonethug’.

In just three weeks, the teams organize themselves, and a leader will always rise from the ranks to give them vision, direction and make their theme a reality. Teams band together to plan meticulously, given limited budget to buy treats and materials, delegate, craft, prepare and execute on top of their day jobs.

All decorations and costumes are sustainable, reusing cardboards, clothes, and a lot of time cutting and gluing things together. 

A lobby or a space wonderland? Team Sci-fi transforms the DDB office lobby into a Sci-Fi theme by adding celestial elements under ultra-violet lighting.

For the love of Halloween, the happy shrieks of the children and the joy of competition, zealous effort is put in to make each Halloween better than the last.

To quote a ten-year-old snow leopard, “This year is the best one ever!” 

Halloween has become one of the DDB Group’s ways of creating priceless moments for family and work to integrate. The kids look forward to coming to the office year on year in their Halloween best and they think their parents have the coolest jobs in the world.