Joris Merks

About Joris Merks

Early 2010, Joris started his current job at Google. Ever since, he dedicates his time to projects helping big advertisers understand the mechanisms of online marketing and help them understand how to integrate this in the overall marketing strategies. In June 2010 he launched the Media Efficiency Panel in collaboration with GFK in which studies were performed with KPN, Heineken, Unilever, Aviko, Independer, Mediamarkt, Allsecur, Vodafone and Thomas Cook. The Media Efficiency Panel was awarded with an AMMA-nomination.

Joris is also European lead of ´Google Marketing Research´ for which he focuses on research to support the marketing efforts of Google products such as Chrome, Android, Google plus and YouTube.

In January 2013, Joris was elected ´Dialogue Marketer of the year 2012´ for his contribution to the field of marketing, communication and consumer dialogue.

Since the start of his career at Google, Joris was frequently asked to speak at various congresses. In 2012 alone, he publically spoke over 50 times.

From age 6, Joris gained 20 years of experience in Judo and other fighting styles, earning him two black belts and titles such as ´Open German Champion´ and ´European Champion Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu´ (ground fighting). Due to a heavy knee-injury, Joris was forced to switch direction after which he started his business career first at NOC*NSF followed by Accenture, Ara Advertising, GFK, Metrixlab and now at Google.

In 2005 Joris wrote his first book called ‘Instinctive Groundfighting’, with the objective to bring fighters back to the source of successful fighting; by instinct.

In 2012 Joris wrote his second and third book simultaneously next to his fulltime job at Google. The book ‘Schizophrenic Marketing’ has the objective to give businesses overview and insight in how to integrate online and offline marketing strategies.

In the book ‘Samurai Business’ Joris teaches (starting) professionals how to build sustainable success from integrity and offers ways how to deal with office politics, without contributing to it. For this 13 Samurai principles are used as a frame of reference, principles he learned from his martial arts background, successfully applied by himself on a daily basis. The objective of the book is to improve business culture.