Mark Linder

Former CMO, KPMG. Former Managing Partner Ogilvy and Mather. Global Client Leader WPP

Mark Linder is a creative generalist in a world of specialists, who has worked extensively in the technology, energy and services sectors and held senior leadership roles in both agencies and client companies.

His non-agency background includes disciplines from commercial marketing to reputation management, including roles as the first ever chief marketing officer for KPMG.

He joined WPP as a global client leader, heading cross-company teams that developed and implemented branding strategies for clients such as Nokia, AT&T, Ernst & Young, BP, Ford Motor Company, Vodafone and McKinsey & Company.

At Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières he has been shaping strategic planning and creative development in both the unattributed and attributed spaces.

He is a board member of N2-Helsinki (a strategy and programme management firm), and a trustee of Common Purpose, the global leadership development organisation.

We’re dealing with a class of challenge we’ve never had before – actors emerge who previously had no role in your category and two years later they’re the centre of it.  The power of the small to take over from the large is very extreme. You cannot respond to a new threat with a series of individual specialist skills – you have to pull back and analyse the whole ecosystem, always look at what’s going on around you.