Iris 2025: Charging Forward With Force

Iris's message to the world in 2025 has been simple: Participate Or Perish. Bolstered by this vocal rebrand, it has been a year of creative and strategic excellence.

The new look was designed to mark the agency's 25th anniversary and to signal a new direction from its new leadership team: CEO Zoe Eagle joined the London team in November 2024, followed by CCO Menno Kluin from Ogilvy New York in October. They joined global CSO Ben Essen, who’s been with Iris since 2007.

For an agency founded as a disruptive start-up brand, it is fitting that it is centring its ambitious mantra around creatively bold disruption.

Zoe Eagle, CEO, on the agency's 2025

What three words would you use to describe 2025?

Two is enough! Charging headfirst.

Talk us through some of your agency's highlights this year?

We embarked on 2025 ready to reset and relaunch Iris - a great agency gearing up to charge out of a quiet few years and make its mark on the industry once more.

And we've been supercharging the team, the work and the pipeline ever since. But I’m most proud of our accelerating culture, because it’s here you really see an agency coming back to life. And 2025 has felt like a stampede. Some of my best bits:

• Our relaunch! Complete with boar-shaped vodka luge, and a bursting new business pipe

• Our charity campaigns for Yes! And Stamma- high impact, culturally important work

• The influx of fresh talent across the business- it will never cease to amaze me how much energy new people bring

• The moment I realised that Iris love a fancy-dress pub quiz - I have found my spiritual home

What one thing are you proudest of this year?

The way that we continue to embrace the new, reinventing when we can.

What one thing are you proudest of this year?

The way that we continue to embrace the new, reinventing when we cannot find what we need.

And what's been your biggest challenge?

It's an opportunity and a challenge, but change. It's been exhilarating and relentless, and a significant thing to nurture a business through.

What are you most looking forward to in 2026?

Everything we’ve been cooking making it out into the world!

And what one change would you most like to see in our industry next year?

The doom spiral. It needs to stop. People have never consumed so much media, and our creatives have never been so empowered to make. This is our time!

Creative Salon On Iris's 2025

Iris kicked off 2025 with one agenda: to stand out in a fragmented landscape, and celebrate full-scale client-agency partnerships.

Nothing represents that more than its new logo: the boar is designed to symbolise the brave boldness of the agency, while the rider is the optimistic and curious client.

And this is especially evident in the inventive and experience-driven nature of its work:

In September for digital identification software World ID the agency illustrated the power of the product with a clever stunt. They created a moving bot which toured around Los Angeles Beach, carrying a billboard which read: "Not All Bots Are This Innocent".

This followed on from a stunt earlier this year that saw the agency create a real life captcha in global urban environments across the world.

For Samsung the agency created a one-off 25-hour skatepark in order to celebrate the launch of the Samsung S25 Series.

And for YES (Youth Experience In Sport) Charity, Iris launched an arresting photographic campaign designed to highlight the power of boxing for young people.

Meanwhile in a major win the agency was appointed act as the lead search agency for skincare brand Beiersdorf (which includes the likes of Nivea and Eucerin).

And to top off a fine year: in an exciting prospect for the year ahead the agency appointed Charlotte Bruton as director of Innovation, AI and Technology.

Creative Salon says... In 2025 Iris - invigorated by its new UK leadership team under Zoe Eagle - has rekindled the bold energy that made it famous, and built the foundations of a multi-purpose agency that is raring to go. This positive drive will position it as a uniquely competitive option for the biggest brands into 2026 and beyond.