Stack hires Merkle DBG data chief as Kimber departs

MSQ Partners agency Stack has appointed Merkle DBG’s Mark King as its first chief data officer to succeed data strategy director Caroline Kimber, who has quit the agency after nearly three years to join data governance specialist DQM GRC, working on its GDPR consultancy service.
King, who has worked at the likes of Claritas, CACI, Wunderman, Proximity and Acxiom, joined what was then the independently owned DBG in 2013 as head of data intelligence and was promoted to strategic planning director nine months later, becoming the lead consultant for Renault UK.
The agency was rebranded in 2016 when it was bought by Merkle.
King will take up his new position with immediate effect, reporting into Stack chief executive Ben Stephens, and will work across the agency’s client portfolio which includes Church & Dwight, Hertz and the Electoral Commission.
He said: “The multi-disciplinary agency structure lends itself to agile and creative thinking across the entire marketing mix, and I am looking forward to leading Stack’s data offering to further strengthen their creative and strategic output.”
Kimber has been at Stack since August 2015, having spent the first 14 years of her career at CACI – latterly as vice-president – and then switching to Wegener in 2005.
She first worked with Stephens at VCCP Me, the agency he co-founded as Stephens Francis Whitson, where she was head of data planning and the most senior data planner within the VCCP group between 2008 and 2015.
Stephens said: “I’m personally very sorry to see Caroline go, having worked with her for over eight years at Stack, VCCP Me and SFW. She has been a terrific to work alongside and I’m sure she will make a great success of her next venture. If anyone can translate the technical subject of GDPR into plain English, it’s Caroline.”
He added: “Mark’s wealth of experience straddling digital, media and CRM will be integral in ensuring our clients are data driven and relevant. His expertise makes him the perfect candidate to ensure that clients are reaching their targets and evolving their customer experiences, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the team.”
Kimber, who will report to DQM GRC managing director Christine Andrews said: “There’s no denying that GDPR will have a profound change on how marketers run CRM programmes and generate prospecting activity and May 25 is just the start of the journey. This is one of the most significant developments that the data industry has ever seen and it’s incredibly important to me to be part of it. ”