Written by Avani Patel and Doris Wang – – –

As students exploring the world of consulting, we’d repeatedly heard the term “The Big Three,” which is short-hand for three most prominent strategy consulting firms: McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group. However, we found it difficult to get a grasp on how these firms differed. We wondered, “could we find differences between the firms from reading and analyzing their research, articles, and insights on Covid-19?” (March – May, 2020)

What we found difficult

Starting amidst the world transitioning to an online platform and working to combat the coronavirus, we came across three unique problems:

Coronavirus articles across the firms largely said the same thing
COVID-19 updates were changing daily
Their websites weren’t created for data analysis

To help overcome this, we began by familiarizing ourselves with each company, and we recognized nuanced differences in organization and content. To compare between firms, we sought to create our own data by viewing the published insights from different angles. This ensured objectivity and comprehensiveness. Given the ever changing uncertainty, we stuck to a specific time frame to focus on piecing together firm-specific observations.

Why does MBB publish free insights?

Essentially, insights provide a two-fold marketing technique to strengthen internal talent while showcasing firm knowledge to new and existing clients. Also, insights provide opportunity for differentiation through content— firms can choose to write for specific industries with unique perspectives, appealing to specific audiences. Taking a look at MBB’s insights, it’s apparent that articles were structured to lead the reader to explore further (paid) services; however, we found that each firm achieved this with a unique strategy.

Differing industry focus

As the pandemic unraveled, it was expected that they would immediately cover topics such as healthcare, strategy & leadership, and organization in a crisis. Interestingly, each firm also chose to write insights in areas the others did not.

We manually counted the number of insights published within each topic area and what percentage each topic was out of the total insights published. This percentage method gave a more holistic and context-based approach to our data. We found that each firm has different industry and function priorities, demonstrating that MBB uses insights to attract clients with specific pain points to align with helpful (yet strategically vague) expert advice.

Bain has breadth, McKinsey has depth

Essentially, this analysis boils down to a preference of breadth vs. depth— is it more important for firms to publish a lot about many different industries and functions, or should they dig deeper into fewer industries and tailor their focus?

Using excel, we recorded and compared the number of insights published by MBB per specific topic. This revealed how many niche industries each firm covered (niche meaning insights on a topic that the other two firms did not address). Bain had the most breadth, demonstrating expansive knowledge of industry-specific implications of COVID-19.

Looking closer, we realized the number of articles published within each niche industry varied. Some had upwards of five to six articles while others only had one. We found that McKinsey wrote more about the niche topics they covered. This indicates greater industry-specific expertise, which could be a more valuable offering to clients within those fields.

McKinsey is future oriented, BCG prioritizes social impact, and Bain targets c-suite executives

We took the top 50 article titles and subtitles from each firm’s COVID-19 research home page and built word clouds to gauge word frequency. These are an objective indicator of the repetition of words and phrases used, helping us visually see differences and detect internal firm value.

As expected, all three firms had their top words directly related to the pandemic (words like “COVID-19, coronavirus, and crisis”). What we found interesting were the most frequent words that ranked after those buzzwords. All three firms had different priorities.

Who authored these 50 Insights?

Who owns the article is another characteristic that differed significantly between firms. The two most important factors come from authorship: how many authors per article, and what level of seniority. Assessing the leverage model across insight authors revealed different levels of seniority across MBB, indicating firm value of experience vs. growth.

Caveat

It’s important to acknowledge that the differences were close overall and insights may not provide accurate representation of firm expertise. Of course, we should be aware of sample-size bias and the limitations of picking a specific time frame in an unprecedented global crisis. It is entirely possible that each firm could have published on other topics after our specified timeline.

Closing Thoughts

Yes, the COVID-19 crisis pressed many companies against a wall and demanded immediate action. This gave “The Big Three” strategy consulting firms a limited time frame to triage and write about what they perceived to be the most impactful and valuable advice to clients, old and new. Thus, these “first” insights that were published as the pandemic unfolded speaks to firm-specific values, expertise, and background. This also pushed us to find creative ways to analyze and quantify what seemed like qualitatively different topics.

What differences among MBB have you found?

Sample References: