Merkle (www.merkle.com), one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing customer relationship marketing agencies, today announced the hiring of Mark Weninger as its first Chief Creative Officer. In this newly established role, Weninger will oversee the agency’s new approach to advanced communications and creative strategy, design and distribution. This approach blends the conceptual strengths of brand advertising with the data-driven consumer insights and targeting capabilities that have helped firmly establish Merkle as a marketing innovator and partner to leading clients.

Weninger’s career spans nearly two decades and includes tenures at several globally recognized agencies. Prior to Merkle, he served as managing partner and chief creative officer at the Minneapolis office of OgilvyOne Worldwide. There, Weninger and his executive teammates achieved unparalleled growth and increased the role of digital communications to become half of the agency’s total media mix.

Earlier, Weninger was executive creative director at Wunderman/Young & Rubicam, New York, and prior to that served in the same role at Carlson Marketing Worldwide, Minneapolis. He started his career at Suarez Direct, and had subsequent tenures at Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, CMC Marketing Concepts in Memphis, and Valentine Radford Advertising in Kansas City. Weninger has worked with an impressive client list of some of the world’s most recognized brands, including British Airways, General Electric, Federal Express, Miles Laboratories, AT&T, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Continental Airlines, Sprint, AOL and other category leaders.

Over the years, Weninger and his teams have received numerous awards for advertising and communications excellence. He has been named an Outstanding Practitioner of The Creative Arts, and has been recognized by Advertising Age, The Mobius International Advertising Awards, The International Echo Awards and The New York Festivals Advertising Awards. Weninger has also won best-in-show honors from The International Society of Business Communicators. He is a frequent speaker at national marketing forums and conferences, and regularly serves as judge for some of the industry’s top advertising and creative award competitions.

Weninger said, “I’m both proud and excited to join the Merkle team, and I’m looking forward to leveraging the emotional appeal of traditional advertising within the highly focused and data-driven programs enabled by Merkle’s unique marketing solutions. This combination should create a compelling value proposition for Merkle clients who want to effectively reach both consumer and business audiences using the most dynamic approaches across all forms of media.”

Merkle Chairman and CEO David Williams said, “Merkle has been steadily increasing our creative talent and providing new capabilities within both traditional direct mail marketing as well as email, mobile and digital media. The appointment of a chief creative officer further strengthens and unifies our end-to-end marketing capabilities, and comes at a time when our clients are seeking integrated customer approaches that are directly informed by consumer data. We selected Mark for his talent, experience and ability to oversee agency teams working on diverse accounts across industry verticals. I am extremely pleased to welcome him to this new role at Merkle.”