Craig Dempster

Craig has been a member of the Merkle executive team for nearly a decade. In his current role as Executive Vice President, he leads Merkle’s Digital Agency Group, a business unit comprised of 750 employees who deliver integrated performance media agency services across search, display, social, mobile, email, web development, user experience, and creative services.

In addition to his Digital Agency Group leadership duties, Craig has led Merkle’s corporate development for the past four years. During this time Craig has steered the company’s acquisitions of IMPAQT, a market leading search agency; Social Amp, a Facebook preferred developer that enables the use of open graph data in customer communications; Fifth Finger, a mobile first experience shop; New Control, a digital and direct agency; and RKG, a performance digital media agency.

From 2010-2014, Craig held Merkle’s chief marketing officer position, driving corporate strategy for the business and spearheading the ground-up development of the agency’s marketing communication, PR, and events organizations. As CMO, he led the evolution and rebranding of Merkle from a database marketing company to a digitally enabled customer relationship marketing (CRM) agency, driven by data, analytics, and technology – a concept now known as Connected CRM®.

Craig is a frequent speaker and writer on the topic of CRM and digital media and has been published in numerous publications, including Advertising Age, AdExchanger, DM News, and Ad Week. Craig holds a political science degree from Hofstra University.