McKinsey's "What's Your Next Brilliant Move?": Brand Platform or Repositioning?
McKinsey has launched its first ever above-the-line brand platform. "What's Your Next Brilliant Move?" was announced at Cannes. For a firm that has never needed advertising, the question is why now, and what it actually signals.
Ross Hastings and Kieran Antill
Co-Founders, Ne-Lo
McKinsey does not need a tagline to get clients. It has a 100-year-old brand and a network that generates most of its work. So when it launches a brand platform, the interesting question is not what the line says. It is what the firm is signalling underneath it.
This is episode ten of Making Moves, a weekly mini-podcast where Ne-Lo co-founders Ross Hastings and Kieran Antill pick a company making an interesting strategic move and interrogate it. Unscripted, unedited, under 15 minutes. The McKinsey episode was recorded on 26 June 2026.
This week: McKinsey and Company, and their new brand platform: "What's Your Next Brilliant Move?"
A first for McKinsey
McKinsey has never had a traditional above-the-line brand platform. Its reputation has been built over more than a century through the quality of its work, the strength of its partner network, and the prestige of the clients it attracts. That model generates most of its new business without advertising.
The decision to launch a brand platform, announced prominently at Cannes Lions, is a signal. The question is what it is signalling.
The Cannes choice
Launching a strategy consultancy's first brand platform at a creative festival is not an accident. Cannes is where the advertising and creative industries gather. It is not where McKinsey's typical client base spends their time.
The choice of channel is as interesting as the platform itself. It says: we want to be seen differently by a different audience. Whether that audience is potential clients, potential talent, or the broader market watching the convergence of strategy and creativity is worth interrogating.
Ross and Kieran noted the curious proximity to Ne-Lo's own "Make Your Move" platform. The structural similarity is there: both position the client as the protagonist of a decisive move. The difference is scale and context. Ne-Lo's platform is built around the repositioning diagnostic, a specific methodology, and a defined client type. McKinsey's platform has to work across every industry, every geography, and every type of problem a global consultancy touches.
What "brilliant" is doing
The word brilliant is doing specific work in this platform. It is not claiming that McKinsey is brilliant, though the implication is there. It is claiming that the client's next move will be brilliant, with McKinsey's involvement.
That is a subtle but important distinction. It flatters the client. It positions McKinsey as the enabler rather than the hero. And it sidesteps the arrogance that a platform claiming "we are the smartest people in the room" would invite.
The word "next" is also interesting. It implies the client has already made brilliant moves. It assumes a track record. It is speaking to a buyer who sees themselves as a leader, not a follower.
The talent hypothesis
One reading of this platform is that it is less about client acquisition and more about talent. McKinsey faces genuine competition for the best graduates and the best mid-career professionals from technology companies, private equity, and a new generation of boutique strategy firms that offer more interesting work with less hierarchy.
A brand platform that positions McKinsey as the place where brilliant people make brilliant moves is a talent proposition as much as a client one. If that is the primary intent, Cannes is the right venue. The creative and strategy industries are full of the kind of people McKinsey wants to attract.
The AI context
The launch sits in a broader context of AI disrupting the consulting model. The multi-million-dollar strategy report that has been a McKinsey staple for decades can now be approximated, if not replicated, by AI tools available to any organisation.
If the insight and the data can be commoditised, the value that remains is in the decision. In knowing which move to make with the information you have. "What's Your Next Brilliant Move?" is a platform that positions McKinsey on exactly that value: not the research, but the decision.
Whether McKinsey can actually deliver on that positioning, given its scale, its incentive structures, and its historical DNA as a data and analysis firm, is the real question. Ross put it simply: so far it looks like a new headline on their website. The test is whether anything actually changes internally.
What to watch
A brand platform only becomes a repositioning when the organisation changes to deliver it. New types of partners promoted. New talent hired. New kinds of work taken on. New ways of measuring success.
If McKinsey's "brilliant moves" platform leads to genuine changes in how the firm operates, hires, and delivers, it will be worth watching as a repositioning story. If it remains a tagline on a website and a video shown at Cannes, it is a brand exercise, not a repositioning.
The distinction is exactly what Ne-Lo's work is built on. A campaign is not a repositioning. A new logo is not a repositioning. A platform is not a repositioning. What happens inside the business is.
Making Moves is a weekly mini-podcast from Ne-Lo, Australia's repositioning consultancy. New episodes every Friday.
