Reinvention

Few consulting firms are as well known as McKinsey & Company, partly because the business has been around for so long (nearly a century and counting). To get ahead of a perception that McKinsey’s historical value comes with an old and rigid worldview, the firm needed a business-to-business campaign to illustrate its unexpected flexibility.

SpecialGuest partnered with Peter Dahlstrom, head of Client and Firm Communications, to bring the Reinvention concept to life. Employing the same kind of applied design, engineering, and creative thinking that’s kept McKinsey relevant for so long, we chose a kinetic, shapeshifting sculpture to represent the firm’s ability to adapt to client needs and a business landscape that’s forever in flux.

The sculpture could be programmed to display an endless number of 3D pictograms, a metaphor for McKinsey’s core competencies and value proposition. Its moving parts were strategically deployed to take on multiple and precise shapes, from an underground mine to an airplane. For the sculpture’s components, SpecialGuest chose a simple, clear sphere to speak to the firm’s global presence and a potential energy that makes it able to reinvent itself.