Dentsu is retiring the Merkle brand in Australia and New Zealand. Around 50 Merkle staff working in experience, commerce, data and analytics will be absorbed into the parent Dentsu business. The brand will only survive for global and regional clients who need it for cross-border consistency.
Separately, Dentsu is selling Merkle's entire Salesforce practice in ANZ to US-based holding company Enduring Ventures. That transaction involves roughly 130 staff and is expected to close in Q3 2026. Merkle's ANZ leaders Paul Whittaker and Gareth Reason will move to the new standalone Salesforce-focused entity.
The rationale, according to Dentsu, is simplification. Clients want a clearer, more direct way to work with the network. Fewer brands, fewer handoffs, fewer internal politics.
Salesforce staff being transferred from Dentsu ANZ to Enduring Ventures in the sale
This follows a string of similar moves across the industry. WPP merged VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson into VML. Publicis has been consolidating under the Publicis Groupe umbrella for years. Omnicom and IPG are mid-merger. The holding company model built on acquiring and maintaining dozens of specialist brands is being dismantled in favour of integrated operations under fewer names.
For the 130 Salesforce staff moving to Enduring Ventures, the transition creates both uncertainty and opportunity. They will operate as a standalone Salesforce consultancy without the overhead of a holding company, but also without the client pipeline that comes with sitting inside a network.
Why it matters
If you are an Australian business working with Dentsu or Merkle, your account team might be changing. The people may stay but the reporting lines, processes and points of contact could shift. Dentsu says the move is about making things simpler for clients, but transitions always create turbulence.
For businesses evaluating Salesforce implementation partners, a new standalone player entering the market with 130 experienced staff is worth watching. Independent consultancies often deliver faster and with less bureaucracy than network-owned operations.
The broader signal is that the era of the specialist sub-brand inside a holding company is ending. Clients no longer see value in the Merkle name when they are already buying Dentsu. The brand premium has evaporated.
