We Hear: Cuts at Rosetta

By Patrick Coffee 

In case you missed it, Publicis Groupe folded Rosetta into the Razorfish Global Network last November in a move that saw quite a few executive changes within the agency: its chief creative officer, managing partner, tech lead, and others departed as Tom Adamski became Razorfish Global CEO and Eric Healy was promoted from managing partner to CEO at Rosetta.

CCO Lars Bastholm was among those who left; he’s now joined several other veterans of the agency world like Scott Lange of Team Detroit and Rudi Anggono of TBWA in accepting a creative role within Google’s “agency for agencies,” The Zoo.

We hear that Rosetta went through another, smaller round of staffing changes this week.

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Since Razorfish/Rosetta has no interest in communicating via anything but boilerplate statements, this is the best we can do in terms of an official response:

“A small number of staff adjustments have been made in 2015 consistent with regular business cycles.”

Here’s how we hear it from several sources:

  • The agency let “several” employees go this week after reviewing its Q1 performance in light of the revised goals mentioned in the November memo
  • ECD Frank Iqbal, who joined the agency in 2008 and was promoted to partner in 2011, was among those let go (along with at least one account director)
  • One source claims that the cuts affected approximately two percent of total North American staff within Rosetta (but not the larger Razorfish organization)

One thing is clear: the North American org is hiring for “close to 40” open positions at the moment.

Update your portfolio.

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