Asia Marketing & Sales Practice

We want excellent problemsolvers, who are passionate about

FAST FACTS
marketing and want to build
12 Marketing Specialists (consultants)
deeper expertise in market
11 Practice Managers, Knowledge Researchers & Staf
research, customer insights and
Office locations Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore analytical techniques.
In Asia Pacific, the Practice consists of 12 Marketing Specialists, who are McKinsey
consultants with specialized Marketing & Sales expertise. In addition, nearly 60 Directors,
Partners & Associate Principals provide Practice leadership. Our Specialists are located
across these 4 locations - Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo.
Unlocking the value of Marketing & Sales
The business landscape is increasingly challenging due to increased commoditization of
core products and services, profound shifts in value from manufacturers to channels,
fragmentation of consumer segments, and proliferation of brands, increasing costs to
serve, reducing scale and adding complexity to execution. The Marketing & Sales Practice
helps clients address these challenges, and unlock their potential by integrating marketing
and sales into business strategy, functions and processes. We typically serve Chief
Marketing Officers and help them drive this transformation by improving their marketing
and/or sales functions and aligning these with business strategy. You can also visit our
global marketing site for more information on the work we do.
http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/marketing/
In Asia, the Practice serves clients in marketing topics such as Customer Insights,
Branding/Marketing ROI, Customer Life-cycle Management, Pricing, Sales & Channel in key
industries like Financial Institutions, Packaged Goods Companies, Telecoms, Consumer
Electronics, Pharmaceutical Companies and Retailers.
A Rewarding Career for Marketers and Marketing Researchers
We ofer those with deep marketing research and customer insights experience a
rewarding and challenging opportunity to combine their knowledge with strategic
management consulting. We are looking for talented marketing researchers to provide
innovative and pragmatic solutions to client problems. As a McKinsey consultant,
specializing in Marketing Research and Customer Insights, Marketing Specialists work
alongside consulting teams and their clients, often as an integrated team member. The
Marketing Practice ofers an intellectually stimulating environment for excellent problemsolvers, who are passionate about marketing and want build deeper expertise in market
research, customer insights and analytical techniques.
Academics
MBA-Marketing, Masters/PhD Marketing, Customer/Marketing Research,
Statistics,
Quantitative Social Sciences, Behavioral Sciences, Psychology, Sociology,
Consumer Science,
Applied Mathematics or related fields with heavy quantitative
analytics using statistics
Experience
Consumer/Packaged Goods, Retail, Consumer Electronics and Financial
Institutions work
experience is ideal
Desired Skills Statistical software proficiency eg. SPSS, SAS or other statistical software is
strongly preferred.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
and a local language (depending
on the office base Korean, Japanese and
Mandarin) are essential.

Global Marketing & Sales Practice Service Lines

Customer
Insights

Branding/
Marketing
ROI
CLM
(Customer
Lifecycle
Mgmt)
Pricing

Digital
Marketing

Sales and
Channel

Commercial
Transformati
on

Uncovers incisive and strategically relevant insights into the needs,

desires, and behaviors of customers by deploying industry-leading market
research approaches, tools and techniques, conducting proprietary
research into trends that afect customers, and ofering the support of a
global network of customer insights professionals
Focuses on building shareholder value by strengthening our clients'
brands, addressing the full range of topics including Strategy,
Architecture, Portfolio, Implementation, BrandMatics, and Marketing
Spend Efectiveness/Marketing ROI.
Drives maximum customer value by using proprietary customer data and
analysis coupled with impactful programs to acquire, develop and retain
high-value customers more profitably and efectively, throughout the
customer lifecycle.
Focuses on achieving significant and sustainable gains in profitability by
addressing pricing opportunities and issues on three distinct but related
levels: market strategy, customer value, and transactions.
Aims to develop a distinctive perspective on how digital technologies are
fundamentally changing people and markets, covering a range of topics
including online and multichannel strategy, advertising, online branding
and spend efectiveness, pricing and digital/functional organizational
design
Drives growth and profits by developing leading-edge knowledge on endto-end customer interaction models, channel strategy and management,
and sales force strategy and efectiveness.
Drives step change in marketing and sales functions through an
integrated approach, combining building deep skills, shaping world-class
underlying processes and tools, creating the desired collective self
beliefs/behaviors, and launching actions with tangible impact.

Meet our
Practice
Consultants
and Leaders

Ying
Marketing Specialist, Tokyo
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Psychology, Stanford University
LANGUAGES
Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghai dialects)
English, Japanese
PRACTICE
Asia Marketing & Sales Practice

From day one, I have

felt the firm's
commitment to my
success.

I am a big believer of multi-cultural

experiences.
In my youth, I lived in China, Hong Kong,
Macau, Canada, before spending many years
studying in the US. After school, I wanted to
experience another culture. McKinsey came to
the rescue and put me in Tokyo, where I'm still
discovering what this amazing city has to ofer.
Outside of work, you can find me chasing after
fresh powder on my snowboard, or searching
A new challenge
for the best place to have a drink or two.
Before joining McKinsey, I researched how culture influences peoples' emotions and
motivations as a Ph.D. student in Psychology. I had a lot of fun and learnt so much in those
years, but when I started thinking about my next steps, I realized I wanted to do something
more challenging, fast-paced, and impactful. In the end, I chose McKinsey because it not
only fulfilled that criteria, but also promised to teach me skills and help me grow. I am very
happy I made this choice. The firm is full of people with varied skills, expertise, and
experience whom I have learned much from. The sense of community and level of support
is tremendous. From day one, I have felt the Firm's commitment to my success.
Insights driven impact
I think the Marketing Practice is a unique place for people who are interested in or have
studied human behavior. On my first few studies, I was awed by just how much the
projects relied on the insights gleaned from marketing research that I supported. To be
able to make this unique impact was very fulfilling. At the same time, I have benefited
personally from the wide-ranging exposure to diferent industries and experts. I continue to
learn, and continue to be challenged.
Capability building and learning culture
On my first engagement as a Junior Specialist, I worked on developing a new product for a
company in consumer goods. The project's success hinged on a large part on a
complicated needs-based segmentation. I was a little worried since it was my first time
performing such an analysis and I wondered about how Id be evaluated if I didn't know
how to finish the analysis. But I quickly discovered that I could easily leverage Firm experts
around the world from the very start. Very often, these experts are heavy-weights who
pioneered the actual analysis or technique, and they never hesitated to give me as much
time as I needed. They helped me hone my skills in a matter of days. I realized that
analyses we often take for granted could be very novel and eye-opening to clients. The
clients were excited to learn a whole new way of approaching product development. I was
especially impressed by the thought that I was not only helping to build one particular
product, but also helping clients strengthen their internal capability, which promised far-

Sunny
Marketing Expert, Seoul
EDUCATION
MBA-Market Research, University of Wisconsin
MA-International Business, Korea University
LANGUAGES
English, Korean
PRACTICE
Asia Marketing & Sales Practice

Its an exciting time for

us now since insightsdriven marketing is at
the top of many
organisations agendas.

Id spent several years in the US and my career with McKinsey took me

back to Seoul where I regularly see friends, family and run after my
energetic 4-year old daughter. Traveling the world is my passion seeing new things, meeting diferent people and broadening my
perspectives. Painting and Latin dance are also next on my list.
The way we work
Among the things about McKinsey that intrigue me and keep me going
is the diversity of people, business issues and the client companies you
work with. These challenge you everyday and make you think hard
about the way you work, how you look at things and think beyond your
boundaries. Another thing that is rare about the Firm is that you are
surrounded
worktowith
really
smart
who is
have
endless
The
networkby
of and
support
help
teams
and people
individuals
unlike
any other. If someone
energy, drive
about
what
theygoing
do. This
what
reaches
out toand
mepassion
for advice,
I see
myself
outisofreally
my way
to makes
help. Because I also
this placeterrific
specialsupport
to me. when I first started here and I still do now, the cycle of helping and
received
receiving never stops. Thats just how we work.
Keeping brands healthy
One of the most analytical, customer insights-heavy piece I was involved in was a brand
strategy study for a telecom service provider. The client was facing real branding issues
amidst a saturated telecom market so we had to get it right. I saw firsthand how customer
insights impacted the way the clients thought about their brand strategy. We changed the
way the client made branding decisions from gut-feel decisions to a more systematic,
long-term view of keeping their brand healthy. The CEO really believed in these insights
and internalized the new brand strategy throughout the organization and executed it
through their marketing campaigns.
Speaking a common language
I began my career in marketing and even today, I am still fascinated by how consumers
behave and think. In our Practice, we share this same curiosity and passion, which drives
us to find out what is behind todays crazy proliferation of customer segments, brands and
channels using cutting-edge tools and approaches.
Its an exciting time for us now since insights-driven marketing is at the top of many
organizations agendas. In Asia, you hear more CEOs talking about the need to become
more customer-insights driven because they are feeling the challenge of fulfilling
consumers needs that are becoming ever more sophisticated. There are so many areas
where we can bring real measurable impact to the clients in helping them to think more
strategically about marketing.

Paul
Principal, Tokyo
EDUCATION
LL.B., Kyoto University International Law & Politics
LANGUAGES
English, Japanese
PRACTICE
Asia Marketing & Sales Practice Leader,
Asia Consumer/Packaged Goods Practice Leader

What really
pulls it all
together for me
is the Firms
selfless
commitment to
client impact.

I had reached the limit for growth during my pre-McKinsey days in Business Development
and Corporate Venture Capital, and was looking for a unique place that would provide
opportunties to learn and be challenged. I was drawn to McKinsey after observing how
friends had matured and grown so fast during their time in the Firm. I thought Id try
consulting for a few years before moving to something else, but I found that my growth
path never stopped the endless possibilities and opportunities to grow, compelled me to
Why Asia?
stay.
The sheer scale of business in Asia is immense,
which is evident just by the number of consumers
in China, India and Japan. Things also change so
quickly in Asia and the opportunity to help shape
this impact is incredibly exciting to me. Being
fluent in Japanese has enabled me to be a bridge not only with the rest of the Firm, but it has also
helped clients bridge internally within their own
corporations. Im really enjoying the experience in
Asia, Japan in particular because of the culture and
More fun than work sometimes
scale of this place.
Coming from a media background, I really love issues that touch on consumers directly. Our
Marketing work connects customer insights with business-driven decisions in consumer
facing industries. I get energised from combining the science & discipline of marketing
research with the enthusiasm and curiousity in industries and product sets. A perfect
illustration is the work we did for a consumer electronics company. We used world-class,
rigorous scientific work to help them change their strategies in defining their products and
marketing them. Our client had invested heavily in technical capabilities because they
believed their consumers mainly valued its technical attributes. But our insights-driven
approach made them realise that aesthetics and ease-of-use played much larger rolse in
how they made their purchasing decisions. I thoroughly enjoyed working with on this piece,
mainly because of my own love for gadgets.
One Firm
You really feel that here. The quality and diversity of the people, being able to work
together seamlessly because of Firm values. I have worked with truly international teams.
And the ability to bring all these people together in such short time frames is incredible.
This can only happen with collaboration on a truly global scale. And clients really value this
sort of diversity in teams. Globally, we also have access to the greatest thinkers on almost
all subjects. Experts who have such a breadth of work on unlimited topics are happy to
collaborate and make time for teams. What really pulls it all together for me is the Firms
selfless commitment to client impact.

Interested applicants are welcome to reach out to me at samantha_yik@mckinsey.com with a

Submitting an application
1. Apply via our Firm's APD website www.apd.mckinsey.com
2. Select the permanent position application form
3. Select, Position : Associate --> Role : Marketing Associate --> Region : Asia-Pacific --> Location
Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo (in order of preference)

Application Deadline for Asia Marketing & Sales Practice

Application deadline is October 5, 2008. Please send in your Marketing Specialist applications by

North American Interviews

The Asia Marketing & Sales Practice will conduct interviews in the Chicago, in late October 2008.
candidates will be invited to attend these interviews and interview details will be shared closer to
All travel expenses will be covered by our Firm.