Willing & Abel: Lessons from a decade in crisis

How do you build a business when the economy is shot?

• How do you transform your company meaningfully, truly empower your people and create a stronger organisation that can change the world?

• How do you make the tough decisions in life, in business and in leadership, decisions that will benefit everyone in the long run?

• Mike Abel, one of the founding partners of multi-award-winning advertising agency M&C Saatchi Abel, answers these questions and more.

• Launched in 2010, M&C Saatchi Abel started out as an industry underdog in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. In South Africa it was also the start of the Zuma presidency, a period of profound economic and business challenges. A decade later, and despite the odds stacked against them, the company’s story is one of incredible success. From Nando’s to Netflix, Takealot to TikTok, Standard Bank to The Street Store, M&C Saatchi Abel has built a reputation for bringing searing clarity and innovative solutions to the strategic challenges of a diverse range of businesses and causes.

• In Willing & Abel, Mike reveals the secret sauce behind the company’s success by sharing lessons hard-learned at the coalface of business, leadership and creativity over the last 30 years. Ethics and empowerment, trust and value, gut instincts and tough decisions – this is what it takes to build a business that is future-fit come rain, shine, pandemics or government corruption. An optimist to his core, Mike shows us that – no matter the problems we face as a country, as a species and as a planet – we have everything we need to make it right.