Merkle Aotearoa names Stéphan Willemse Head of Digital Experience
Merkle Aotearoa has appointed Stéphan Willemse as its new Head of Digital Experience.
In this position, Willemse is tasked with supporting clients in shaping customer experiences that are cohesive, valuable, and useful.
The role is designed to blend strategic consulting with execution. Willemse will collaborate across the agency's disciplines, ensuring that ideas are translated into outcomes grounded in genuine human insight, technical feasibility, and commercial viability.
Willemse brings more than a decade of expertise in digital strategy and innovation to the agency. Prior to joining Merkle Aotearoa, he served as Head of Strategy at Digital Arts Network and held the position of NEXT Innovation & Futures Specialist at TBWA Worldwide.
His professional background spans several industries including insurance, banking, and public sector transformation. Throughout his career, he has focused on supporting organisations in innovating toward realistic and positive alternatives to their current operations.
Agency leadership
Gareth Reason, Managing Director of Merkle Aotearoa, commented on Willemse's appointment, highlighting the value of his experience for the agency.
Stéphan's experience and passion for doing good for the community, society and customers makes him the perfect fit for Merkle Aotearoa. Our digital capability in Aotearoa continues to evolve, and Stéphan's leadership will help us leverage the agency's creative and media capabilities and to push boundaries in experience design, aligned with our technical capability to deliver outstanding outcomes for our customers.
Reason noted that as digital capability at Merkle Aotearoa evolves, Willemse's leadership will be key in enhancing creative and media collaboration while advancing experience design in line with technical delivery for clients.
Willemse's experience and vision
Willemse outlined his perspective on the new role and the opportunity to work alongside both Merkle and dentsu teams.
Combining dentsu's inspirational creativity and media reach, together with Merkle's experience-led tech expertise, means we're in a fantastic position to design innovative, inclusive, future-ready experiences. I'm looking forward to being part of such a talented team, where we can combine our skills, innovation and creativity to deliver bold ideas that open new opportunities for our clients.
He described the position as one that leverages the strengths of both organisations to create future-ready customer experiences.
Industry background
Throughout his previous roles, Willemse has contributed to projects in the insurance and banking sectors as well as to public sector transformation initiatives. His focus has often been on practical innovation that delivers tangible improvements for organisations looking to progress beyond existing frameworks.
Merkle Aotearoa's decision to appoint Willemse comes as the agency seeks to align its creative, media, and technical capabilities more closely in the digital experience space.