25 Years of Iris: Youthful Chaos to Agent-Provocateur Partnerships
When the co-founders of Iris set up their new creative shop 25 years ago, they had a particular energy about them. Ian Millner, now the agency’s chair, was one of the six – and he’s frank about what that energy was. “The first thing to say about that is just how young we were. Youth is both a fantastic gift and a curse,” he says. “The gift of it is obviously the energy, enthusiasm and naivety. And, of course, the willingness to work really hard, to throw yourself into it completely, to give your all. At that stage, you cost less, you’re more open to risk and opportunity. There were amazing advantages to the point in our lives when we did this.”
But he’s conscious that none of the sextet were fully-formed leaders from the get-go in 1999. “Obviously, we weren’t at the top of our game – our skills and experiences weren’t honed. If you compare us, let’s say, to VCCP, who started soon after, they were more mature, and much clearer about who they were, why they were there, and the sort of work they wanted to do.
“For us, it wasn’t clear,” Ian adds. But he and the other co-founders soon discovered the potential in that. “That absence of clarity opened up the company to entrepreneurial spirit. It meant that, because we weren’t sure what Iris was, we could experiment.”
That’s a particular point of pride for Ian, who hosts the ‘Entrepreneurs in the Wild’ podcast, exploring business leaders’ psyches and backgrounds. In fact, a new miniseries launches today, beginning with guests Claire Humphris, former CEO of Iris London, and Adam Wright, former key player at Iris now managing director of Big Potato Games, as well as Zoe Eagle, newly appointed CEO of Iris London.
Rather than being a specialist in a certain kind of creativity, in the early days Iris found itself following the founders’ instincts or being led by ideas that were oddly shaped but perfectly tailored to the agency’s early clients’ needs. That led to some interesting work that the industry couldn’t easily describe at the time. “In fact, a lot of people were suspicious of it because it was hard to categorise,” says Ian. “We did so many projects that were world-firsts, really innovative.”
All of this was years before mobile, when ‘digital’ was really only just about to take off. Within the agency’s second year, it created a digital soap opera for Swan, the rolling paper company – fully fleshed-out storytelling on an online platform before YouTube even existed, just hosted on a website. “It won many awards because it was quirky and content-rich, even though it was clunky,” says Ian.
The ‘Gig in the Sky’ was another pioneering project that demonstrates Iris’ early audacity, where the agency arranged for Jamiroquai to play a concert for Sony Ericsson on a plane flying over Europe.The band broke six records, including the highest and fastest concert, recording, and gig in a plane. “It was part PR, part content, part dealer marketing,” says Ian. “That’s really what defined Iris: this ability to blend things together to make amazing ideas happen. When I compare that to other businesses, they were often much more centered around a specific type of work, a type of client, or a single discipline. For us, it was chaos – open-mindedness, constant change. Other agencies tended to stay more rooted in the discipline that gave them their start.”
When the Iris leaders met people with specialist skills who they admired and got along with, they’d bring them into the tent. That’s how Iris Experience launched, and how they expanded capabilities in PR and content in their early years. “It was a series of talent-related events,” says Ian.
It was almost a decade before the soul of Iris was formalised into some clear positioning and the agency started talking about ‘extraordinary ideas’ and, soon after, ‘participation’. “We could see a change happening with clients,” says Ian. Quite often, they were expressing that they didn’t feel advertising was the answer. They needed something else, but couldn’t quite put their finger on what. “It was this middle ground, working with culture, communities, and what people are interested in. That’s how we started latching onto participation as the core idea for Iris. We invested in clarifying it through things like the Participation Brand Index and participation mapping. These were ways to help clients understand the ecosystem they were operating within – not just what they could buy through a media house, but more holistically.”
That was in opposition to a general feeling that pervaded in the industry. “We weren’t taken very seriously,” says Ian. “We were young, our product wasn’t well-defined, and we probably didn’t get the respect we might have deserved. That started to create this sense of being underdogs: ‘We’re Millwall. No one likes us.’ It gave us an anti-industry, anti-establishment vibe – not because we were angry, but because we were just having fun and doing things our way in our own little bubble.”
From around 10 years in, Iris focused more on scale, professionalism, and data-driven creativity. Strategy consulting and performance marketing became much more prominent. “In the early days, it wasn’t about structure. It was about culture,” he says. “What mattered was innovation and doing things that were catchy and really interesting. As you get bigger and work with bigger clients, their expectations grow. The money is bigger, the contracts are clearer, and you have to become more like a global partner. You become much more grown-up, and that changes the flavour of the business.”
But a flavour isn’t the same as following a structure for every project. “Our business is always evolving. One of the biggest advantages we’ve had is our ability to change,” says Ian. “Changeability is really good – if we want to change, we can just do it. It’s because we don’t have a locked and loaded legacy. We’re not tied to saying, ‘This is what we are.’ We’ve always been experimenting. Sometimes those experiments have been amazing, and sometimes they haven’t.”
Choice experiments include Wenlock and Mandeville, the Olympic mascots for London 2012. Iris won a pitch against beloved animation studio Aardman to design them, which Ian is immensely proud of. “And they weren’t just mascots,” says Ian. They were digital, customisable, interactive, made into statues, games, toys, and in all sorts of PR events. “I think we probably undersell how we managed to do something like that.”
When Cheil took a stake in 2014, everyone looked to Iris to see how it would change. “I think our industry is kind of obsessed with ownership structures. The conditions of your ownership are really important, but there are lots of flavours,” says Ian. “There are bad owner-managers, bad private equity owners, and bad network owners. There isn’t a universal formula for what works best.”
Iris’ teen years were a good time for the agency to find a parent company. It’s always had external shareholders, beginning with an angel investor who owned 20% of the business for a few years. Then, for a while, the Bank of Scotland was a shareholder. Later, it had a minority shareholder in Meredith, a US publisher, before Cheil came in. “We’ve always been used to working with external partners. The key thing is knowing why you want them and setting up the relationship correctly,” he says. “When we did the deal with Cheil, we looked at all sorts of options: smaller, mid-cap networks, big networks, private equity, listing, or even doing nothing – maybe a management buyout. You get to a point in the industry where you need to reward shareholders who’ve been in it for a long time. It’s a responsibility. We had a lot of shareholders who had sacrificed a lot, and we needed to create a value event to allow them to realise some of that value. I took that very seriously – it was important to redeem that promise.”
Partnership with Cheil held clear benefits. Its parent company Samsung was already a client and the Iris leadership wanted a partner who would value and listen to them, respecting that the agency is different and significant enough to be noticed. “It was tricky to find a partner that was both small enough and big enough for that,” says Ian. “Cheil ended up being a really good fit. We’ve been part of their network for 10 years now, and overall, it’s been a good experience. They’ve given us our space and freedoms. They’ve been really supportive.”
Another experimental moment that defined the agency came soon after – the anniversary Jeep spot that Iris created for the 2016 Super Bowl. Just being able to work on such a high-profile spot, which famously cost $10 million for 60-seconds and used just one-third of the screen, is still impressive for Ian. “How did we get ourselves into a position where we’re doing that for Jeep during the Super Bowl?”
That’s the sort of project that makes people up their game. “And this is where Eduardo comes in,” says Ian. He’s talking about Eduardo Maruri, who Iris hired as chief global creative chair in June this year. “What I’ve noticed since covid is much more caution,” he adds. “More emphasis on just doing the day job. Businesses are starting to feel more linear, more like a service, rather than being partners in crime with their clients. What Eduardo is helping us do is galvanise people across the network around an agenda: let’s create a series of ridiculous, amazing, mind-blowing, award-winning work. We’re operationalising it, taking it seriously. We’re not just waiting for it to happen by chance, because it might not. We want to corral it and give it the best chance of seeing the light of day.”
That’s the work that moves the dial for brands. It’s also the work that moves the dial for the agency brand. Eduardo’s running the agency’s first-ever global creative council across the network with the aim to “develop a procession of potentially world-first ideas,” says Ian.
Looking back over the agency’s creative leaders over the years, Ian makes some sense of the lineage. “Our first was Sean Reynolds, who was incredibly likable and very design-led. His work always looked amazing, and he was ahead of his time in digital – really a leader in digital before it was even a thing. He allowed us to do things like the ‘Gig in the Sky’ – those ‘What the fuck is it?’ projects. He was an amazing leader.”
Next was Shaun McIlrath, who came in as global chief creative officer when Sean Reynolds moved to the US. “Much more of an ideas guy and integrator,” says Ian. “A fantastic person, highly respected. He was instrumental in making participation a much more professional, integrated product. He helped us build campaigns that started with great business ideas and turned them into something extraordinary. He retired last year, which was a big moment for us.”
When he moved on, Grant Hunter stepped into the role. “Grant had been with the network for a long time and brought a strong digital and social-first creative approach.”
Which brings us to the current global CCO – Menno Kluin, a Dutchman who’s spent most of his career based in New York and has moved to London to lead Iris from its home city. “A global citizen,” Ian says. “He’s got elements of Shaun McIlrath’s storytelling and business-idea clarity, Sean Reynolds’ design and aesthetic strength, and Grant’s digital and social-first expertise. He’s a blend of all their strengths, wrapped up in one very cool Dutch guy. We’re really excited about him. He’s going to be a game-changer, reconnecting us to that competitive edge and confidence needed to push boundaries and create award-winning work.”
Iris 25th year has been a real changing-of-the-guard moment. In September the agency announced the appointment of Zoe Eagle as chief executive officer of and Katy Hopkins as executive creative director of Iris London. Ian is thrilled about the new lineup. “We’re looking for people who want to cultivate a more agent provocateur-style partnership with clients, rather than just focusing on getting the work done.”
Iris is travelling in a direction of collaboration rather than subservience to clients. With the global mood as it is, Ian feels this is important. “People are anxious, they’re following the agendas of the day around efficiency, AI, and so on. But what’s the aim,” asks the agency boss. “You’ve got to do things clients can’t do for themselves. If we’re not creating innovative, world-first, attention-grabbing work, then what’s the point? Otherwise, you’re just a project management company.
“Whether it’s creativity, culture, content, data, performance media, or however it manifests, an agency has to bring something unique. If we’re doing that regularly, we don’t need to worry about fees, prices, or procurement. That stuff takes care of itself.”
Ian nods to the context of our post-covid era, the cost-of-living crisis, wars and environmental challenges. “We need to restate our values and principles around creativity. That’s why we’ve made such a heavy investment in creative leadership. At the same time, it’s not just about creative people – it’s about leaders across the business. Creativity isn’t enough on its own; it’s part of a broader ecosystem.”
The long tail of the covid-19 pandemic is something Ian wants to challenge and the leadership of the agency has the task of changing the Zoom-led culture, injecting more passion into the work. “That’s the starting pistol for what we’re aiming for,” says Ian. “When you think about people and talent, your employer brand hinges on leadership – on what leaders are doing to support the people who work for them. That’s got to involve training, developing, stretching, and exciting people to keep them engaged. When you think about most people’s careers, they’ve usually had a mentor who spotted something in them and helped bring it out. That’s one of the main functions of leadership in agencies. But I think that’s been sidelined during the Zoom era. Everything’s become much more rational and sensible. There’s nothing like an in-person meeting for coming up with something truly good or unlocking real emotion around an idea.
“Think about your emotional state during back-to-back Zooms,” he continues. “You just tick along at a four – you’ll never flip into a higher gear where adrenaline starts flowing, where real ideas start forming.”
Ian turns to neuroscience and the peak-end rule, which suggests that the way we remember and form commitments isn’t about the average experience – it’s about the peak moment in a relationship or the dialogue and the end. Everything else in the middle doesn’t leave the same impression. “In agency life, it’s got to be about those peaks – a pitch, a meeting, or a creative breakthrough. You need to focus on creating those peak moments and how things end.”
“For us, it’s about drawing a line in the sand. There was a period in our history that started with covid and extended through all the things that followed: the cost of living, the Great Resignation, and so on. It’s a period in our industry’s history, but we’ve decided it’s over.
“We’re reconnecting to our principles,” he says. “Being world-first, creating excitement, and doing things clients can’t do for themselves. It’s about creating work that our people look back on and say, ‘That was amazing. We did that.’”
