• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 17, 2015

Merkle has appointed Adam Lavelle to the position of chief growth officer, responsible for expanding its digital services business. It's a bit of an unusual job description, he agrees. The coveted title, CGO, belongs to a mere
600 LinkedIn members from companies like MRM // McCann, BPN Worldwide, Horizon Media, React2Media, and Ziggedy.

Don't confuse CGO with chief revenue offer, Lavelle said, describing the position as helping clients like Dell, Direct TV, and Geico grow their business. Doing this means becoming the practitioner -- helping brands execute strategies, overcome challenges, and find the one version of the truth as it pertains to data.

Too often brands are told by every company they work with "on the ad-tech stack" they drove 1,000 sales, when after checking the back-end systems they only sold 700. 

"Clients do not like staring at LUMAscapes," Lavelle said. "They have a hard time finding one version of the truth when it comes to data."

Lavelle has more than 20 years of experience at digital marketing agencies. He most recently served as the chief strategy officer for iCrossing, responsible for the creation of digital marketing programs for Fortune 500 clients and the management of corporate strategy.

While there, Lavelle also launched -- and served as the CEO of -- Core Audience, Hearst's audience platform, leveraging its first-party data to provide brands with direct access to the publishing company's audiences.

Merkle, which acquired search company Rimm-Kaufman Group earlier this year and then renamed it Merkle RKG, now has a digital services team of more than 800 professionals supporting programmatic media, search, social and mobile, and email.