Under the 2026 theme Shift Happens™, Conn Bertish’s talk, Happy, Purposeful Businesses Are Harder to Kill, looks at a shift every business leader can recognise: how people recover, create, adapt and perform when pressure keeps rising. Bertish is a featured speaker at The Nedbank IMC, taking place on 17 September 2026 at Mosaïek, Johannesburg. Modern Marketing is a proud media partner.
Bertish is a global creative strategist and purpose advisor. His argument is simple: happy, purposeful businesses are not soft. They are harder to break because their people are more connected to what they are building and better equipped to keep creating under pressure.
Bertish helps organisations build cultures that are more resilient, more creative and better able to perform under pressure. His advisory work has supported major African businesses across retail, insurance and high-growth entrepreneurial environments.
For Bertish, purpose only matters when it changes how people think, work, recover and perform. His perspective is not theoretical. Having used creativity, play and purpose as part of his own recovery from cancer, Bertish brings a rare mix of lived experience, creative intelligence and commercial relevance to the stage.
At the Nedbank IMC, his session will show how leaders can use purpose more practically: as a source of resilience, energy and performance when business is under pressure. It is a timely message for marketers and business leaders who need cultures that can keep moving when conditions are tough.
‘Bertish is that rare combination of creative powerhouse and genuinely inspiring human being. His work, and his own recovery story, make his message impossible to dismiss,’ said Dale Hefer, CEO of the Nedbank IMC.
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