Sarah Aitken

I lead teams of talented individuals to help brands and consumers to connect with each other in a mutually beneficial way. Brands have massive power as cultural assets and through inventing and re-inventing themselves in collaboration with their consumers, they can play a really meaningful role in peoples lives and justifiably command a disproportionately high share of the market. Here at iris, we call it Participation Branding.

In 2007 I moved to the U.S. to join what would become iris Worldwide's first international office in New York, tasked with helping to grow a multi-client agency ripe to compete with others in the market. Since then we have expanded our network to across the Americas and have had the pleasure of working with a wonderful group of clients over the years in Coty, Philips, Yahoo, Diageo, Barclaycard and Reckitt Benckiser, to name a few.

I've also got a bit of a 'bee in my bonnet' about the fact that brands can (and should) use their power for social good more often. To me, all brands should be able to invest in socially positive marketing or product initiatives in a way that drives both society and their business forward at the same time.