No they're not.
McKinsey would like you to think otherwise of course. They paint a brand image of only doing high-end C-suite strategy work, but ultimately thats a vanishingly small part of the business. Their bread is buttered (just like Accenture) on labor heavy implementation gigs.
Fundamentally, the business of billing out human hours is the same, as are the the incentives. Doesn't matter if its a strategy consulting firm in NYC or an advertising agency in Nepal.
They will all inflate scope, inflate titles/rates, hire mostly cheap new grads, and slowroll-and-expand any engagement.
And they will all take ANY work you give them, regardless of in-house expertise (which they rarely have, given the goal is to pay employees as little as possible to capture margin).
The advertising agency in Nepal will claim to offer strategy consulting to your C-suite, just as McKinsey NYC will happily churn out a powerpoint deck about advertising in Nepal if you're willing to pay them.
Hence why professional services firms all trade at low multiples. It's an undifferentiated commodity business of re-selling human labor in project-based chunks.
McKinsey would like you to think otherwise of course. They paint a brand image of only doing high-end C-suite strategy work, but ultimately thats a vanishingly small part of the business. Their bread is buttered (just like Accenture) on labor heavy implementation gigs.
Fundamentally, the business of billing out human hours is the same, as are the the incentives. Doesn't matter if its a strategy consulting firm in NYC or an advertising agency in Nepal.
They will all inflate scope, inflate titles/rates, hire mostly cheap new grads, and slowroll-and-expand any engagement.
And they will all take ANY work you give them, regardless of in-house expertise (which they rarely have, given the goal is to pay employees as little as possible to capture margin).
The advertising agency in Nepal will claim to offer strategy consulting to your C-suite, just as McKinsey NYC will happily churn out a powerpoint deck about advertising in Nepal if you're willing to pay them.
Hence why professional services firms all trade at low multiples. It's an undifferentiated commodity business of re-selling human labor in project-based chunks.