As chief executive of the Central Office of Information, Mark Lund is using his 30 years of private sector experience to transform the communications agency of the UK government. Here, he tells Neil Gibbons about his career so far: Photographs by Sam Friedrich

Mark Lund loves ideas. A former private sector ad man, he’s still rapt by what a memorable campaign, an iconic image, a simple persuasive hook can achieve.

And having left behind a 30-year commercial career to become chief executive of the Central Office of Information, he remains as passionate as ever about the inarguable power of a simple, beautifully crystallised message.

Just as well, because he has one of the toughest briefs around. In the COI, Mark is heading up the UK government’s marketing and communications agency, reporting directly to both the Permanent secretary Government Communications – Matt Tee – and the Minister for the Cabinet Office .

The COI was established in 1946 as a replacement for the Ministry of Information, and today works with Whitehall departments and public bodies to produce information campaigns on issues that affect the lives of British citizens, from health and education to benefits, rights and welfare.

It’s a big operation. “With 700 people on its staff, the COI is a bigger organisation than you’d usually find in advertising,” he says. “It’s also more multi-layered and because it’s part of government, it’s like working for an enormous business, with all the complexity and formality inherent in that.”

But he’s throwing himself into the challenge with focused gusto, a far cry from the younger Mark who, after studying English and Philosophy at the University of Bristol, entered the advertising industry in a somewhat distracted way.

“I couldn’t decide between journalism and a more commercial career,” he says. “I only applied for advertising because there was a girl who I thought was wonderful. She wanted to work in advertising so I tagged along with her. I finally got a job in my final interview.”

And that was where it began, with Mark working as an account management trainee working at Lintas. He soon moved to Collett Dickenson Pearce, where in six years he rose through the ranks to become an account group head. "CDP was then one of the great creative agencies with clients that included Heineken, Benson & Hedges and Hovis,” he recalls. “It provided very good training in the power of ideas, and the use of iconic images. That still remains true. The world of advertising has more sophistication, accountability and measurement. But to catch someone’s attention, you still need a strong idea and powerful imagery to make people stop, and to make them want to be close to you. Brand affinity remains as important as ever.”

CDP, says Mark, was very creatively-led but “quite commercially naive” and, as he entered his late 20s, it wasn’t going to give him the more commercial experience he craved. And so he upped sticks to Paris, taking on a global brief at Eurocom (later Euro:RSCG) as director of international development. The firm had recently bought businesses in Asia and America and Mark was charged with coordinating them.

“I spent a couple of years flying around the globe, trying to give people across the business the same sense of creative identity,” he says. “It was terrifying. I was living in a foreign city, and speaking a language I’d not spoken before. But what was different was that they really treated the business as a business. They were more hard-nosed about how it worked, and how to function in order to create a profit. I came out knowing more about business than before I went in.”

He found that, by distancing himself from the creative pressure-cooker of the London advertising scene, he’d gained fresh perspective.

“It’s like that Rudyard Kipling quote, ‘What should they know of England who only England know.’ You need to experience things away from what you already know to really understand.”

Mark spent two years in Paris but then rejoined the Lintas network, working for both Lintas Worldwide and Still Price Lintas in London, as head of account management. Lintas was, he says, “very bright and planning–led, very much a blue-chip business”.

It was in this role, he says, that he learnt the art of managing a department. He considers himself fortunate to have worked alongside advertising heavyweights such as Adam Morgan, now at eatbigfish, and Richard Hytner, currently deputy chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi.

At the end of 1995, another move. Mark left the firm to become managing director of the relatively small London office of Delaney Fletcher Bozell and, after three or four years of steady growth and success, the business offered him an opportunity he couldn’t refuse.

It was 2000, and the firm was preparing to merge with FCB. But its London operation represented a stumbling block, holding seven conflicting accounts, the loss of which would have slashed the value of the firm markedly. So Mark and his partner Greg Delaney led a management buy-out to form Delaney Lund Knox Warren, where Mark became group chief executive responsible for all the companies in the DLKW group.

“We signed 11 documents when we were doing the deal,” he says. “Two were about what we were buying, the other nine were about what would happen ‘when’ we went bust.”

With good reason, for the deal was completed before a time of seismic transition. “We did it in 2000, which was an amazing year, still in the dot-com boom,” he says. “We saw a huge surge of business. But then came the burst of the dotcom bubble, and 9/11.”

But significant new accounts gave the firm the platform to weather the slump. The new wins included Vauxhall, Burger King and the Halifax Building Society (it was Mark’s agency who gave the world the Howard commercials). The firm also secured business from the COI. “All in all, we had enough momentum to cope with the slowdown.”

In fact, Mark was soon trying to win clients in Europe. “With the target audiences becoming more like each other, it meant we could export content more easily. We saw early on that rather than just being an advertising agency, we could incorporate digital, direct marketing and promotions.”

It worked. The fledging firm began with a roll call of about 30 people; five years later it employed almost 200. In 2005, DLKW became part of plc called Creston, and last year became a top 10 agency by size.

Mark recalls his time at DLKW fondly. “I was lucky to work alongside brilliant founding partners,” he says. “We made a very good team. We all did things the others couldn’t. We matched our skills and weaknesses nicely.”

But by end of last year, Mark found himself ready for a new challenge. “I’d done it for 10 years, I was coming up to 50. I just thought, if I don’t do something different now, I never will.”

And his next move was certainly different.

For the first time in his career, he left the private sector, seduced by the challenge of one of the biggest communications challenges in the public sector: chief executive of the COI.

“I saw it as a chance to do something on an even wider scale,” he says. “The COI communicates through wider channels than anyone else in the UK.”

He refutes the suggestion that the timing of the move had anything to do with an economic malaise that had hit the advertising industry hard. “Even then, the private sector was already a year into its downturn,” he says. “I’d already coped with fact it was going to be tough. And given the state of public finances, I knew there was going to be pressure on expenditure next year. So it wasn’t a matter of getting out of the private sector and into something more comfortable.”

If anything, Mark believes that his passion for communications has been given a new lease of life. “It’s easy to get passionate about, because the mission is more objectively important. Our campaigns are about road safety, stopping people from smoking, using less CO2 - things I want to try and help move forward. It’s about how the world is going to change in the next five years and how we can help government communications to be a successful part of that.”

He draws much of his obvious enthusiasm for the role from the people he’s working with. “We’ve got a great mix – people who have come from the private sector and people who have been in the public sector longer and understand the ‘government’ way of working. There’s a really strong sense of esprit de corps. And when you come from an agency background, that’s important. I didn’t want to work in a bureaucracy.”

Still, the cultural gulf between commercial and government comms hasn’t been lost on him. What sets the latter apart from the private sector is a feeling of common ownership – the public’s sense that it belongs to them. “On one side, that’s a really good thing,” he says. “People start by feeling affinity with the message. It’s of them, whereas commercial brands polarise opinion. But it does create a greater level of scrutiny. The most important thing an organisation has is the reputation of its brand. Anything that might endanger that is a real problem. With government communications, it’s the same but heightened.

Of course, the danger is that such scrutiny pushes the communicator into becoming anodyne or bland. “That’s a constant tightrope that all brands walk. But we just walk it in a slightly more exposed position. We use extensive research to make sure what we’re proposing is appropriate and engaging. We’re probably more sensitive to the vagaries of political debate. But at end of day, all messages have a short period to grasp attention. They’re the mayflies of communication. If not grasped quickly, they’re gone and money is wasted.”

Looking to the future, Mark outlines three objectives for the Central Office of Information.

The first, he says, is to make sure the government is communicating as effectively as possible. A tall order given that the COI’s campaigns are trying to effect behavioural change. “We’re looking at the science of why people change, and how to prompt them to do so. In commercial communications, you’re often trying to encourage people to do the same things again – they buy something once, and you want them to keep buying it. Government communications is about encouraging people to do something different. There’s a whole science behind that. The book Nudge [by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler] explains it well.

“The second priority is how well we’re measuring and evaluating what we do, and the way we react to that. The private sector is measured by sales, turnover and profit; that has its limitations but it’s simple. The public sector is about outcomes and reputation. If you’re persuading people to stop smoking, what is the measurement? Is it the number of people giving up? The number of people starting the process of giving up? It’s a more complicated measurement metric. So it’s important we work out a system for that.

“And the final area is digital and social media. How do we use the fact that people are connected, and having conversations, in a way that’s not been possible before. It’s like a national version of the village pump where people come to discuss things. How do we get into and influence those conversations? That’s tricky for a commercial brand; it’s even harder for government issues. So how do we encourage digital participation?”

With that exciting new territory hoving into view, Mark is relishing the challenges ahead – even if he is “vaguely surprised” by his longevity in advertising. “In the same way that you never see baby pigeons, where are all the old people in advertising?” So what has kept him so passionate about the field? What’s the secret?

“Two things,” he says. “Firstly, find the best people you can to work with. The power of good, inspiring people is transfiguring. And secondly, you’re going to spend a lot of time doing it, so if you’re not enjoying it, work out why – then change it.”