Artefact taps Edouard de Mézerac to lead APAC and China

Artefact Asia has promoted Edouard de Mézerac from head of data and consulting for APAC, to managing partner of Artefact China and APAC.

The promotion comes as Pascal Duriez moves to a chairman role after having served as CEO of Artefact’s digital marketing operations in Asia since 2009. Vincent Luciani is co-founder and global CEO.

De Mézerac joined Artefact in September 2018. The company credits him with leading a significant transformation of Artefact Asia, helping the organisation evolve from a digital agency to an end-to-end data and digital-service company. Prior to Artefact, he was with Olivier Wyman's consulting practice, and he has held senior positions in France, the US and China. He was named to Campaign Asia-Pacific's 40 Under 40 in 2020. 

“Over the past three years, I have focused much of my efforts on how the consolidated data consulting and data marketing model can best perform, as it both innovates for clients at the highest level and aligns with our core competencies,” de Mézerac said in a release.

Artefact Asia offers services in data consulting, consumer engagement (CRM and social), ecommerce, data science, data engineering, digital tech, media, creative and strategic planning. Its APAC team has extended to 150 employees, working in the offices of Shanghai and Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Clients include Loctite, LVMH, Danone, Pernod Ricard, Sanofi and Henkel. The company won Consultancy of the Year (gold) and Independent Agency of the Year (bronze) at Campaign Asia-Pacific's Agency of the Year Awards in 2020. 

De Mézerac told Campaign China that to stand out from the competitive Chinese market, Artefact works with all the ecosystems, including Alibaba, Tencent and whatever new platforms may come along. “By running social CRM, you can collect quite a bit of data and enrich your first-party data with WeChat data," he said. Data scientists can develop models to better target consumers and then start “adding much more intelligence and modelling to improve and increase conversion, engagement and loyalty,“ he added.

He believes that the Chinese market is “becoming both very technical, but still very content-oriented”. So Artefact combines “technical stuff, technical talents, facts, content, creativity, and the right ideas” to bring art and technology together.

About its plan for China and Asian markets, de Mézerac said, “by running a business in Asia, we are right at the fork because we have these two legs”: Helping Chinese brands adapt and go outside of China and helping international and local brands to win in China.

In this sense, he is reorganising all the teams into "chapters, cutting across the region”, in such disciplines as creative, data science, data engineering and media. "In the media chapter, we have people in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and China," he said by way of example. "So we have the ability to cross knowledge across the countries and the fork."