July, 2026.- Iris is a difficult act to follow. Ian Millner spent 26 years building it from a start-up into a global creative network with more than $100 million in revenue. Now, he is stepping into Chairman and Non-Executive roles, working with founders creating “the next generation of marketing companies.” He has found his way to ZEAL Group, a brand activation ecosystem spanning Tommy (social-first) and Joe Public (retail PR), and NewGen, a social and creator agency operating across London, Manchester, New York, and Paris.
Millner explains that he works best with entrepreneurs in settings that prioritize growth and innovation. He is attracted to a “caper”—a business with the opportunity to disrupt the category. All of these brands have so much potential in their respective spaces and an abundance of down-to-earth passion and talent.
In this interview, Millner, Stewart Hilton (Co-Founder of ZEAL Group), and Mike Craddock (CEO & Co-Founder of NewGen) discuss the unifying thread across ZEAL’s capabilities: turning apathy into action. Clients increasingly want big brand ideas that engage and activate consumers at the right moments. Those ideas are not always best conceived through the lens of a global agency of record building a TV campaign. ZEAL helps brands show up when the moment is right to make an emotional connection, then uses every tool to turn that connection into purchase.
Hilton notes the biggest change in client behavior: a few years ago, conversations were about awareness, impressions, and reach. Today, clients are asking how marketing is driving growth. Are we recruiting new shoppers? Increasing penetration? Changing behavior? Growing sales? Attention still matters, but clients increasingly want partners who can connect creativity with commercial outcomes.
Craddock reflects on NewGen’s evolution from a talent management agency in 2015—before the creator economy was a recognized category—into a social and creator agency with proprietary technology platforms. They are solving every client issue across social and creators: sentiment, automatic tracking, analysis, optimization, and real-time performance.
This is a conversation about independence, ambition, and the future of agency models built around action.
Ian Millner:
1. The Post-Iris Chapter: You spent 26 years building Iris from a start-up into a global creative network. What specific qualities did you look for in your first appointments post-Iris, and why ZEAL, NewGen, and MSQ?
Iris is obviously a difficult act to follow, but I’ve realised that I work best with entrepreneurs in settings that prioritise growth and innovation. I also tend to be attracted to a caper, where the business has the opportunity to disrupt the category. All of these brands have so much potential in their respective spaces and also have an abundance of down to earth passion and talent!
2. Chairman vs. Founder: You’re stepping into Chairman and Non-Executive roles rather than founding or running day-to-day. How does your leadership style change when you’re advising rather than driving? What’s the hardest thing to let go of?
Iris was a global business with more than $100 million of revenue, so I was used to working in diverse and scaled settings with high levels of ambition and empowerment. been involved in has ever really been ‘about me’. My style has always been centred on vision and ambition. It’s about serving, connecting, and catalysing – not telling or driving. So, I don’t feel like I’m letting go of anything. It feels like a natural and energising transition.
3. Building the Next Generation: You’ve said you’re excited to work with founders creating “the next generation of marketing companies.” What do ZEAL and NewGen have in common with Iris in its early days, and what do they have that Iris didn’t?
I think the most significant thing we have in common is probably our attitude to change, and the fact that they’re both exciting, innovative and high growth companies. Both businesses benefit from much more focus and specialism that we saw at Iris, with Zeal being very focussed on brand activation and FMCG, and NewGen much more at the cutting edge of the creator economy.
4. Action vs. Attention: Stewart Hilton said “the future belongs to models built around action, not just attention.” How does that philosophy resonate with what you learned at Iris, and where did Iris maybe get it wrong?
I think that the Iris philosophy of ‘Participation’ is totally consistent with this. All three businesses are centred around engagement, impact and results,and understand the value of culture and distinctiveness in ideas.
5. The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Each of these businesses has “a strong entrepreneurial mindset.” How do you distinguish between genuine entrepreneurial ambition and just a founder who’s in love with their own idea?
I think that generally speaking, entrepreneurs are self directed and self motivated, but the really good ones – the ones that can build valuable, scalable businesses – are also self-aware team players who can attract talented people to the journey
6. The Advisory Role at Iris: You’re continuing to advise Iris Worldwide alongside these new roles. How do you keep from being distracted? And what would cause you to step back from Iris entirely?
All good things must come to an end, and I’ve been working carefully over the last couple of years with the Iris leadership group and our network owner Cheil to create new leadership, structures and systems. These transitions happened some time ago, with Iris reporting into the Cheil network locally under the leadership of Jill Smith in the Americas and Zoe Eagle in Europe. I’m always available to them.
Stewart Hilton (ZEAL Group):
7. The ZEAL Ecosystem: ZEAL has grown from a brand activation group to an ecosystem spanning Tommy (social-first), Joe Public (retail PR), and now Ian as Chairman. What’s the unifying thread across these capabilities, and what acquisition or launch is still missing?
We’re creating the UK’s first specialist brand activation group.
Our clients increasingly want big brand ideas that engage and activate consumers at the right moments. Those ideas are not always best conceived through the lens of a global agency of record building a TV campaign. Our background is in turning apathy into action. We know what makes people engage and respond and just as importantly what turns them off. We help brands show up when the moment is right to make an emotional connection, then use every tool in our armoury to turn that connection into purchase. We already have specialist divisions for shopper, experiential and brand partnerships and by adding Tommy and Joe Public we have increased our best-in-class capabilities in social-first creativity and retail PR. For our clients it means bigger, integrated campaigns built with the end result in mind and rooted in effectiveness – we want ZEAL Group to be a growth engine brands can rely on, when growth elsewhere is hard to find.
8. Action Over Attention: You said the future belongs to “models built around action, not just attention.” What specific change in client behavior have you seen that proves this shift is real, not just a pitch line?
The biggest change is the questions clients are asking.
A few years ago, conversations were often about awareness, impressions and reach. Today, they’re asking how marketing is driving growth. Are we recruiting new shoppers? Increasing penetration? Changing behaviour? Growing sales?
Attention still matters, but clients increasingly want partners who can connect creativity with commercial outcomes. That’s exactly where brand activation comes into its own and that’s why our growth engine approach that emotionally engages consumers to ultimately trigger a purchase feels more in line with the needs of clients today.
9. Ian’s Impact So Far: Ian has already been working with you “as we’ve grown.” What specific piece of advice from Ian has already changed the way you think about ZEAL’s trajectory?
Ian’s biggest challenge to us has been to think bigger. He always recognised the value of ZEAL’s best-in-class brand activation skills and he could see that more and more clients were gravitating towards this. His encouragement has always been for us to double down on ownership of our niche but to add new adjacencies that enable us to do even more for clients in the brand activation space, so the ideas we deliver are bigger and more effective.
Ian’s experience and lessons learned whilst building Iris into what it became has been invaluable in how ZEAL is looking at what our clients need and having the ambition to go and build it.
He’s also bloody good fun to have on board as he shares our core values and has a different perspective at times that can be both challenging and energising.
Mike Craddock (NewGen):
10. Creator Economy Evolution: NewGen started in 2015, before the creator economy was a recognized category. How has the business model evolved, and what’s the biggest shift you’ve had to make to stay relevant?
We initially started as a talent management agency and have evolved into a social and creator agency as part of that transition, using tech to help us scale. We have always been at the forefront of keeping our clients relevant, staying ahead of what’s new in the market and always moving forward.
11. International Ambition: NewGen operates across London, Manchester, New York, and Paris. Which market has been the hardest to crack, and what does Ian’s international experience bring to that challenge?
The USA. The country operates as a completely different beast. Every state varies and sometimes seems like its own country compared to Europe. It’s expensive, time consuming and you can easily get it wrong. Ian’s industry expertise, coupled with his long history of building success (in the UK and globally), can help us unlock this.
12. Proprietary Technology: NewGen has “proprietary technology platforms.” What problem are you solving with your own tech that off-the-shelf tools couldn’t, and what’s the biggest risk of building rather than buying?
We are solving every client issue across social and creators: sentiment, automatic tracking, analysis, optimisation and real time performance. We’re identifying creators 10 times quicker and getting content out in the market twice as quickly. Before now, tools were fragmented – yet we’ve managed to centralise all that in one place.
For All Three:
13. The Next 26 Years: Ian, you’ve built a 26-year legacy. Stewart and Mike, you’re each building for the next decade. What’s the single biggest thing that’s changed about building an agency business today compared to when Ian started Iris in 1999?
IM: The market is hungry for experts, focussed in their fields, and offering leadership, innovation and reliable results. The gap between what agencies can do and what clients do for themselves has disappeared. Agencies need to act as leadership companies, and offer real and specific expertise.
SH: The pace. Clients expect agencies to move much faster than they did 25 years ago. Culture moves faster, retail moves faster and consumer expectations move faster. You can’t spend months developing an idea anymore. You have to move at the speed of your clients and the people they’re trying to reach.
That makes specialist expertise even more valuable. Clients don’t need agencies that can do a bit of everything. They need partners who can solve specific problems and deliver commercial results.
MC: Social and creators didn’t exist 26 years ago. It’s an entirely new ecosystem. And similarly, the services that grew Iris didn’t even exist at its infancy. This is the new wave of media.
14. Independence vs. Exit: All three businesses are independent. Is independence a strategic choice or a stage before a sale? And what would make each of you consider selling?
IM: There are high quality independents achieving significant growth, and outperforming traditional network solutions. However, there are also lots of networks doing well,and they’re the ones that remember that, even in the AI arms race, in the end it’s talent that wins. Someone always owns a business, so it’s less about the state or status – it’s more about the quality, trust, pride and camaraderie of the leadership team, and how they’re incentivised.
SH: In our view, when you acquire a new partner you’re doing it because you LOVE what they already do, you just believe that they could be even bigger and better as part of your eco-system. ‘ZEAL’ means passion, energy and enthusiasm in pursuit of an objective and we feel at the moment this is maximised by Tommy and Joe Public feeling independent. We work side by side from the same office and we have built new joint processes to ensure that all our clients get the full benefit of the new skills in the group, but outside of this we are pretty hands off and they run their own businesses independently.
Whatever happens in the future for ZEAL Group, my partner Rob and I have always hated the term ‘exit’. The reality is that we’d only ever consider partnering with a larger entity if it presented exciting opportunities for ZEAL, for our clients and for all our ZEALers. It would need to be an ‘entry’ to a new adventure, not an ‘exit’. And retaining a feeling of independence, as we’ve given to our own acquisitions, would be essential, too.
15. The Chairman-CEO Partnership: Ian, you’re in a Chairman role. Stewart and Mike, you’re the CEOs. What does the ideal Chairman-CEO relationship look like, and what’s the most common way that partnership fails?
IM: It’s about being a catalytic facilitator. It’s their adventure – I’m just there to help them get somewhere better and quicker. Partnerships like this fail when Chairs think it’s all about them, or they damage trust by over reaching or micro-managing.
SH: The best Chairman doesn’t run the business, they help you build a better one.
For me, it’s about having someone who brings experience, asks the difficult questions and challenges your thinking, while trusting the leadership team to make the day-to-day decisions.
I think those relationships fail when roles become blurred. A good Chairman should provide perspective, not interfere. A good CEO should be open to challenge, not just look for reassurance.
MC: I value a direct relationship with constructive feedback. It should be a supportive one where networks are aligned and help with internal processes is forthcoming. It’s good to be challenged and to see things differently.
