Mark FIDELO / Scanad

Mark began his career in advertising as a writer at McCann in Edinburgh where he won awards for his work on Health Education Board for Scotland, the Scottish Office, Scottish & Newcastle Breweries and other national clients.

He moved to Nairobi with his young family in 1995 to become Creative Director of Y&R Kenya. In the 6 years he was there, Mark built a young creative team that helped turn the agency ‘s fortunes around and saw it begin to vie with dominant shop Lowe Scanad in terms of producing award-winning advertising.

In 2001, Mark returned to Scotland to take up a CD position with a local Glasgow agency.

But the Africa bug had bitten and in 2003 he responded to an offer to join Scangroup as CD of JWT Kenya, again based in Nairobi. From then until 2010, Mark worked as part of a small but vibrant team, dedicated to applying JWT’s stringently high global creative standards in the local market.

In 2010, two things happened; he was appointed CD of a newly formed agency called Ogilvy Africa, set up to handle Ogilvy’s large pan-African clients and he committed his future long-term to Kenya by building a house in suburb of Nairobi.

Mark’s main focus during that year (apart from chasing builders with a pickaxe) was to launch new telecom entrant Airtel in 16 countries simultaneously across Africa. With that task successfully completed he was rewarded with a CD position at Scanad Kenya, replacing the retiring (but not shy) Andrew White.

Mark remains at Scanad, the agency with whom he used to compete so enthusiastically during his stint at Y&R, to this day. His clients include Coca-Cola, Safaricom, KCB bank, Kenya Airways and national carrier Kenya Airways.