McKinsey Spins As The World Burns

I promised myself at the start of this year that I’d forego writing about the ethics and mechanics of communications, but today’s newspaper forced me to make an exception: After getting accused of coddling the world’s worst polluters in a widely-shared news article earlier this week, McKinsey & Co. ran an unapologetic defense as a full page ad in the Financial Times (here’s the text on their website).

The company has the right to make its case and deserves credibility points for standing by what they do, but all of the points get erased by the spin of the author’s arguments which I’ll address in specific references below:

“Why do we serve high-emission companies? Because that is where the emissions are.”

The ad’s headline is deceptive because it poses McKinsey’s engagement with such companies as focused on their emissions (later on, the copy will reference many “climate transitions” in another fudge) which of course isn’t true, since the scope of their projects ranges far and wide. The subhead repeats that positioning along with the requisite reference to the upcoming COP26 conference and then the first paragraph does so again (while noting a partial list of industries it serves).

“And no, there is no contradiction between working in these sectors and our commitment to the transition.”

Repetition is a proven tool for producing memory retention and it’s clear that McKinsey’s main point is that it’s not guilty of doing anything wrong because it’s not…