Life lessons from South Africa’s most optimistic ‘ad man’

It’s not often that a business book can be described as a “riveting read”, but Mike Abel has achieved this and more with his first book, Willing & Abel: Lessons from a decade in crisis.

Beginning at what some would see as an end point, Abel chronicles his family’s decision to emigrate to Australia, and then to return to South Africa a year later when they realised they had left for all the wrong reasons.

He writes how his return was also to take up the opportunity to start M&C Saatchi Abel, the only M&C Saatchi advertising agency in the world to bear another name. The book then takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride of successes and challenges, both personal and professional, that demonstrate how it’s possible to achieve anything you set your mind to when failure is simply not an option.

Speaking to the SA Jewish Report ahead of the book’s launch, Abel says, “Initially, the book started out as a way to celebrate the tenth anniversary of M&C Saatchi Abel with one very clear purpose – to be useful rather than a brag book. But then the pandemic gripped the world, and we realised that while the country did in fact need something useful, it needed to be more than an agency book, something more personal and real. So with that shift, the book went from being a history of the agency to stories and lessons from my three decades in advertising, and what I had learned from my mentors and co-founders.”

Abel chronicles the challenges of the early days of his agency, from having no chairs or tables, to battling for clients, to bringing his team on board – whether that meant pitching to them on aeroplanes or convincing them also to return to South Africa after emigrating. He writes about turning the advertising industry’s cut-throat culture on its head, the behind-the-scenes action of working with clients like Nando’s, and how being a “force-for-good” is the best way of doing business.

In all this, he simply never allowed failure to be a possibility. “When you start a new business in the midst of a financial crisis, an overtraded economy, and an industry which is watching you and waiting for you to fail, you have to go in with the intention of only succeeding,” he says.

“When my partners and I founded M&C Saatchi Abel, we did so with the intention of creating an ‘international airport to land dreamliners, not small propeller planes’. So in my mind, M&C Saatchi Abel was always going to succeed because we wanted it to. There were tough times, but what has never changed is our intention to create one of most successful marketing and communication agencies on the African continent and beyond. That doesn’t mean we haven’t had many sleepless nights, but failure was simply not an option. We just tethered ourselves to the mast, and rode out the storm.”

One chapter that stands out is when Abel tells the story of a health issue, from his first instinct that something was wrong, to the brave choice he made to keep it at bay. “That was an incredibly emotional chapter for me to include, and one I debated about including, as I have never wanted it to become something I’m defined by or known for,” he says.

“But the truth is that the incident has played a big part in how I view the world, and it describes to people exactly the way I choose to approach life. I couldn’t exclude it as that would be dishonest of me and would seem as though I have something to hide.

“And while there is an inherent vulnerability that comes with it, there is also a strength in that vulnerability – to show that at the end of the day, we’re all just people who have been dealt different hands and have found ways to navigate them,” he says. “Ultimately, if that chapter inspires one person to change how they see a situation and helps them to move forward, then that vulnerability has helped someone.”

Abel says the book is for everyone. “A student who is looking for what to do, a business person trying to navigate rough waters, a start-up trying to find out how to deal with conflict, or simply someone who is looking for inspiration and motivation. A lot of people will think that it’s a business book or an autobiography, and to be honest it’s both, and so much more. The way I choose to describe it is like a recipe book, filled with many tips and tricks in life.”

Writing the book was “both enlightening and emotional, as often it meant going back to good and sometimes bad times. But as they say, there’s no success without failure”, he says. For him, the toughest part of the process was making sure that the book was “always more than just some stories … [a book] that’s useful and can add value to anyone reading it. That process required a lot of questioning, conversation, and evaluation. So it was a very introspective, but rewarding process, and it helped to have great people around me who helped direct the book and gave honest and professional feedback.”

After going through the emigration process and realising that South Africa was where he belonged, his advice to anyone considering leaving the country is, “Make sure you really understand the reason that you’re going. In the book, I speak to a quote from Nelson Mandela, ‘May your choices reflect your hopes and not your fears’. While I thought that emigrating would bring new hope and opportunity, the truth is that I was leaving out of disillusionment and fear, and once that was clear to me and my wife, we knew that we could return home to South Africa where we belong. People under-value the importance of ‘home’ and over-value the importance of sedate predictability.”

At a time of so much loss, Abel hopes the book will give people “Hope, inspiration, and a reason to believe. I want people to know that a crisis doesn’t mean despair or failure, and that it’s possible to move forward if you just change your focus and perspective. I’ve often told people around me during this time that ‘nothing positive ever came from being negative’, and Willing & Abel is really a testament to that. I want the book to encourage people to stand up and put one foot in front of the other, as that is the way life is lived. Slowly, daily, and enjoying the actual journey, not just waiting for a promised destination.”

And really, it’s just the beginning. His agency has managed to navigate the pandemic, and “we’re keeping an optimistic viewpoint, making sure that we continue to partner with our clients and help them to drive the resurgence of our economy. We will continue to play our part in pushing for an inclusive economy and a sharing culture. The only way is to keep flying our planes against those head winds, and keep the airport ready and focused, and in doing so, also land a few more dreamliners along the way.”