Dentsu UK&I Promotes Toby Benjamin to Lead Merkle’s Media Practice

Merkle, a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company and part of dentsu, has promoted Toby Benjamin to the newly created role of managing director of its media practice.

Toby joined Merkle in 2018 to launch and lead its tech consultancy practice, advising clients on balancing inhouse and outsourced models and helping brands take more ownership of their media and data strategy to ensure total transparency.

Initially brought in to support the onboarding of the Nestle Global SEO project, Toby has since helped to strengthen and mature Merkle’s Google partnership and built out its consultancy offering winning new brands including Disney, Deliveroo, Paypal and Hilton.

In this new role, Toby is responsible for leading and growing Merkle’s market leading media business, which comprises PPC, paid social and programmatic. Reporting to both Anne Stagg, CEO of Merkle UK, dentsu’s CXM Service Line, and Hamish Nicklin, CEO of dentsu’s Media Service Line, home to Carat, iPro and Dentsu X, he will also be responsible for driving ongoing collaboration between both Service Lines. This will enable clients to seamlessly access Media and CXM services and deliver a total customer experience across every interaction a consumer has with a brand.

Merkle’s media strategy team will report to both Benjamin and Niyi Duro-Emanuel, Merkle’s UK head of strategy & transformation. This provides clients with strategic consultancy to progress their transformation programmes and accelerate further business growth.

Toby’s second focus area will be to drive expansion of Merkle’s media clients into CXM services including the analytics and CX practice areas, supporting clients on their ongoing customer experience transformation journeys across media, data and digital transformation and analytics. This follows an increase in Merkle’s media clients moving into CXM and is now a high growth area for the business.

Anne Stagg, UK CEO of Merkle/CXM, said: “Since joining Merkle as one of the first senior leadership hires for the Agency Service business, Toby has made an incredible contribution delivering over £4m in incremental revenue within the last year. His wealth of experience and proven track record makes him the perfect fit to lead our media practice and drive collaboration between dentsu’s Media and CXM Service Lines, something we are really excited about.”

Toby Benjamin, managing director, Merkle media and media activation lead for CXM, added: “It’s an incredibly exciting time to be leading Merkle’s expanding media practice after such a standout year for the business. The team have done a fantastic job in getting us where we are today, and I look forward to further strengthening the collaboration between both media and CXM services where we are seeing huge growth and helping clients with their ongoing customer experience transformation journeys.”

Hamish Nicklin, CEO, Media, Dentsu UK&I added: “The integration and expansion of Merkle’s media practice is a huge opportunity for dentsu and I couldn’t think of anyone more capable than Toby to lead that.”