Industry loses a creative spirit and all-round good guy

The industry is mourning the loss of a talented creative, colleague and a friend.Kaushik Iyer was the accomplished creative group head for DDB Singapore. At age 32, he had already grown in prominence in both the Singapore advertising community as well as India, winning awards at Cannes, the Effies and many others.Colourful by nature, he described himself on LinkedIn as "a sucker for whimsical headlines" and sarcastically called himself "self-deprecating by nature".Prior to his two-year stint with DDB, Iyer was with JWT Singapore and JWT Mumbai for a total of four years. Before moving to Singapore, he worked at Taproot India. In his numerous roles across agencies, Iyer worked with established brands such as The Times of India, Airtel, Pizza Hut, Kingfisher Airlines, SilkAir, HSBC, Lux, The National Geographic Channel, Shell and Friso.Commenting on the loss, David Tang, CEO of DDB Asia said:"We are all very saddened about losing Kaushik so suddenly. All of us who know Kaushik know just how warm, likeable and cheerful he was. All his peers value and admire him for his diligence, craft and cheerfulness every day.  He was just back from a holiday break with his family in India, after just been promoted in DDB. We grieve and mourn deeply in losing him."Meanwhile, former colleague Frank Bauer, global new business at JWT describes him as passionate and enthusiastic. Bauer had worked with Iyer in his previous role as senior copywriter at JWT. At that point Bauer was leading the local team.“I liked him a lot. I remember Kaushik being a very enthusiastic, sensitive, intelligent and talented Creative. He had contributed a lot to JWT’s key successes in 2013 and 2014. The news is a shock and my heart goes out to his wife, family and close friends.”