Type of agency: Advertising
Company ownership: Independent
Key personnel: Alok Lall, MD, Param Saikia, CEO, Ranjeev Vij, board director, Ashish Mathur, sr VP Experiential, Arnav Ghosh, VP Digital, Kenneth Augustine, creative director and Josh Thomson, CEO of APAC
Accounts won: Microsoft
Accounts lost: None
Param Saikia, previously CEO of Publicis Modem/Dialog was appointed to the role of CEO of iris India in August. The agency poached three senior members from Publicis, who were among 16 new appointments made in September.
Arnav Neel Ghosh came in as the VP of digital marketing; Ashish K. Mathur as senior VP of experiential and Ram Krishna was brought in as AVP digital strategy.
Ranjeev Vij joined iris as board director from BBDO India in August.
The Microsoft win in July saw the agency join the panel of marketing agencies for Microsoft’s Consumer and Online business to handle the brand’s integrated marketing in India.
With Microsoft being the only significant business that the agency has in its portfolio currently, iris needs to back the hiring spree with some solid business wins.
Campaign Score: 5
How IRIS rates itself: 8
The first two years of iris in India has seen us establish really firm foundations. As the fastest growing independent agency network in the region, we’ve seen a 77% growth versus 2008 with our headcount since launch growing from eight people to 60. We’ve attracted some of the industry’s top talent, with the hiring of Publicis Dialog’s Param Saikia as CEO of iris India, as well as other senior hires like Ranjeev Vij, Ashish Mathur and Arnav Ghosh. Our investment in talent, especially in the areas of digital and experiential, has helped us to win big ticket clients like Microsoft as well as increase our remit from existing clients like adidas, Shell and Sony Ericsson.
We’ll continue to provide truly integrated solutions by offering both multiple specialism and the ability to blend it efficiently and effectively around a client need. We believe this will be the agency model of the future.
