Iris Singapore bolsters strategic capability with a slew of new hires

Iris Singapore has appointed Mittu Torka as the new planning director, and Charlie Young as regional head of social. The new hires comes in line with the agency's move to strengthen its overall strategic capability across its local and regional clients. Torka last helmed the role as head of strategic planning with VMLY&R Singapore for over a year. Prior to that, she was with Ogilvy as planning director. As the regional planning lead for Coca-Cola brands in Malaysia/ Singapore and Huawei South Pacific business, her responsibilities at Ogilvy included driving high impact creative work as well as shaping the communications approach for some of its clients. Torka also had stints with agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi and BatesCHI & Partners, as well as Genesis Production House and Out-of-home Media. She has worked in markets such as Kuala Lumpur and India in her 12 years of experience. Meanwhile, Young was previously the global brand director with TBWA\ Digital Arts Network for one year and two months. Prior to that, he was with Vocanic Singapore from 2014 to 2017. He last helmed the role as its general manager Singapore. Young has had stints with Singtel, MediaCom, Mindshare, MEC, and Marc & Chantal Design. In addition, Rica Facundo joins Iris as cultural strategist to launch Iris Singapore’s in-house trends and ethnographic research offering across its existing client list and to new clients. All three hires will work across all of Iris’ client which includes Guinness, Starbucks, Samsung, Philips, Jagermeister and William Grant & Sons among others. “With more and more first-class clients choosing Iris Singapore due to our strategic capabilities, it gives me great pleasure to welcome all the new guys into the team. We offer our clients end-to-end strategy, with no separate P&Ls, no bureaucracy, no boundaries, no NewNameOldAgencyHoldingGroup politics. Just simple, compelling, strategic leaps that are moving our clients' businesses forward. Which has been reflected in the agency growth - both top and bottom line - over the past few years," Mark Hadfield, head of planning for APAC at Iris, said.