Columbia, MD, April 15, 2021

Dentsu Launches Merkle Canada to Expand its Customer Experience Capabilities

As part of dentsu’s move to strengthen its customer experience management (CXM) offering, the network announced today the expansion of its CXM services in the Americas region by launching Merkle Canada.

Merkle's expansion into Canada brings globally leading capabilities across data transformation, digital transformation, and customer experience management, tailored to the Canadian market and its local, social, and cultural diversity. Under the simplified model, brands will gain easy access to solutions spanning CX transformation, technology consulting, program strategy, CRM/loyalty, digital experiences, commerce, and data science/analytics.

"The fastest growing brands today are maximizing their competitive advantage by delivering best-in-class customer experiences. Launching Merkle Canada and scaling our capabilities in this mission-critical space, enables even stronger solutions for our clients to drive growth in a consumer-led economy. This expansion brings scale, award-winning credentials, and world-class expertise in CX strategy, digital and data transformation, and technology consulting in a way that few else can in the market,” said Jeff Greenspoon, CEO, Canada and President, Americas Solutions for dentsu International.

With deep expertise and strategic partnerships across AWS, Adobe, Google, and Salesforce, Merkle brings together its data-driven customer experience approach to form a strong and holistic offering in market.

This launch was timed to coincide with major forces that are changing the Canadian marketing landscape specifically:

  • The acceleration of a decade’s worth of digital transformation taking place in the past year including surges in D2C and e-commerce activities. Canada has known some of the most stringent COVID-19 restrictions in the region — including months of continuous stay-at-home orders and curfews, which radically accelerated those areas of customer experience. Now, many Canadian brands are quickly turning their focus quickly to identifying new audiences and associated journeys.
  • The importance of diversity and equity, which both continue to be key focus areas. As one of the most multicultural countries in the world, Canadian clients request and need DEI principles in their marketing, including unbiased segmentation and anti-racist customer journeys. Our Canadian teams are highly attuned to those needs.
  • The shift to the new cookieless world that all markets are facing. Canada is currently reviewing its own privacy regulations which will, in terms of stringency, land somewhere in the middle of the US and Europe’s GDPR. This will give Canada an opportunity to operate in a regulatory "middle ground," which Merkle will explore to expand into local data co-op and clean room solutions.

Walter Flaat, who will lead Merkle Canada said, "We believe that especially after these recent years, the future of brand loyalty and competitive advantage lies in elegant, effective, and simple customer experiences. Experience-led companies on average have 1.6 times higher brand awareness and 1.4 times faster revenue growth. We also know that martech will completely reset in the next two years, in a way that will shape a generation. These are all reasons for us to ensure we bring the best possible CXM capabilities to Canada, together with our most Important partners."

Michael Komasinski, President, Merkle Americas said, "Merkle's expansion in Canada is a big part of our strategy in the Americas, since the opportunity in Canada is two-fold; made up of both the resident Canadian market, and American brands that want to expand into that market. Those brands face a challenge that Merkle is uniquely positioned to help them solve. And, with highly skilled teams in all key Canadian metro areas, we're here to help them successfully navigate the transformation required to provide those regionalized, personalized experiences.”

Merkle Canada will launch with a team of 80 across Canada, closely connected to Merkle's 7,000 strong American team.