The vast majority of recent staffing changes related to the Razorfish/Rosetta merger fell on the latter side of the equation. Over the past four months, Rosetta said goodbye to its CCO, its CEO and an unknown number of staffers across its North American offices in addition to (allegedly) a couple of ECDs.
This week, however, the other half of the Razorfish Global Network made some downsizing moves of its own.
We hear that these changes affected the New York and Atlanta offices and involved approximately 20 departures, with three-quarters of that total laid off from the organization’s Manhattan location. We have no details regarding departments, names and/or tenures.
Razorfish made a few executive changes around the world recently: in May, the company named ad tech veteran Samih Fadli as its first chief intelligence officer; Bharatesh Salian, recently hired as VP of its Mumbai and Bengaluru offices, was also promoted to lead those locations last week after less than two months on the job.
Last summer, the agency went through a similar but larger round of layoffs across its North American offices, with CEO Tom Adamski promising unaffected staffers that they would receive merit-based pay increases on August 1st. A source tells us there was no such bonus for 2015.
It would seem, given Publicis Groupe’s somewhat lackluster Q2 results and subsequent restructuring moves, that the larger organization is still attempting to figure out where the various interlocking parts of the Global Network fit and which need to be trimmed in the interest of efficiency and healthy profit margins.
The Razorfish Global Network declined to comment for this post.