Helping consulting firms
to create high quality thought leadership

This report is an account of McKinsey's ongoing research initiative that seeks both to pinpoint the most important shifts that organisations are grappling with and to provide business leaders with some ideas and suggestions about how to approach them.​ From the off, this report is impressive. The landing page does an exceptional job of engaging the audience, with a strong introduction and dynamic, interactive navigation through the key report takeaways. ​ Within the downloadable PDF, the visual depiction of data points is creative, yet clear, and strong and on-brand imagery is used to break up the text and ensure continued engagement. Graphics have also been designed to translate across different mediums, aiding accessibility and demonstrating McKinsey's awareness of their target audience's preferences. ​ The report is built on a sound and comprehensive data set, all of which is clearly explained in a brief methodology upfront, followed by a detailed description of the research programme at the end.​ "Lessons from leaders", included on the landing page, provide an interesting perspective on the qualitative data collected for the report, supported by short biographies of the interviewees which demonstrates their credibility to speak on this topic. ​ To conclude, a set of high-level takeaways are provided, augmented with detailed recommendations and action points for the reader that encourage onward conversation within their business.

As a sequel to a 2021 report by Accenture, this highly targeted report looks at how oil and gas companies are meeting the challenges of the energy transition and advancing their reinvention strategies. This sharpness of focus and target audience helps with differentiation and the clarity of the value proposition for the piece. Their enterprise-wide reinvention involves rethinking the strategies, technologies and operating models in five areas: Competitiveness, Carbon, Connectivity, Customers and Culture (the 5Cs) and their research showcases how and why leading companies in the industry are progressing across these transformation areas.​ While the sample for the primary research is not large, there is good specificity in the types of oil and gas companies they engaged. The analysis created Reinvention Index scores and three typologies - Leaders, Followers and Laggards and explored the characteristics of each. We liked the light touch methodology up front followed by more detailed information at the back, and the early positioning of the authors landed well. Accenture’s thought leadership has a consistently strong brand treatment and is at the leading edge of engagement, this report is a prime example of where great design is augmented by a clear brand voice. Pieces like this make excellent use of additional assets such as video and data visualisation, while not distracting from the focus of the report. That said, the ‘slide’ style of the design leads to it being a lengthy piece overall (close to 100 pages), which will test the patience of some. There are calls to action threaded throughout, even though the recommended actions are a little light. This report is also a good example of how Accenture consistently invests in strong research to support their thought leadership, which is often multi-dimensional in approach and increasingly innovative. ​