Toby Benjamin to lead Merkle’s media practice

Benjamin joined Merkle, part of Dentsu, in 2018 to launch and lead its tech consultancy practice, advising clients on balancing in-house 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 Nestle Global SEO project, Benjamin 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 his new role, Benjamin is responsible for leading and growing Merkle’s media business, which comprises PPC, paid social and programmatic. Reporting to both Anne Stagg, chief executive of Merkle UK, Dentsu’s CXM service line, and Hamish Nicklin, chief executive of Dentsu’s media service line, 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”, according to a statement released by the company.

Merkle’s media strategy team will report to both Benjamin and Niyi Duro-Emanuel, the company’s UK head of strategy & transformation. Benjamin’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.

Commenting on the appointment, Stagg 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.”

Benjamin added: “The team have done a fantastic job in getting us where we are today and I look forward to further strengthening the collaboration between media and CXM services, where we are seeing huge growth, and helping clients with their ongoing customer experience transformation journeys.”