David Merrifield

With 9 years of paid search experience including roles as Head of Search Engine Marketing at Kelkoo and Head of PPC at Hilton Worldwide, David Merrifield now tackles the intersection of paid search, social, display, and affiliates at RS Components. Exploiting a B2B electrocomponents niche with incredible efficiency, RS Components is a hidden champion that generates nearly €1B in online revenue annually across 32 countries, all while competing against giants like Amazon. David’s passion is for organizational change management, with an emphasis on strategic automation.

David’s session explores the challenges facing modern organizations that might prevent them from applying performance marketing automation in an effective and scalable manner.

Providing real-world examples derived from the often conservative electrocomponents industry, he demonstrates that in order to maximize the potential of automation, any given organization needs to be prepared for change – sometimes drastic change. To solve this tension and deliver lasting success, David provide guidelines for answering “are we set up for automation success?” and “how can we grow in an environment of constant tech disruption?”. His clear emphasis is on an ambitious growth mindset of step changes, as opposed to a fixed mindset delivering incremental value only. After a rousing discussion of the permanent necessity for human talent, he brings it all together by delivering on RS Components’ motto – “For The Inspired” – to offer a progressive vision of how to ace your organization’s performance technology functions, backed up by a specific action plan.