Specialist - Client Communication Strategy
McKinsey & Company · Tokyo, Japan · 4d ago
Mid levelOn-siteStrategy & Management Consulting
Who you'll work with
You are someone who thrives in a high-performance environment, bringing a growth mindset and entrepreneurial spirit to tackle meaningful challenges that have a real impact.
In return for your drive, determination, and curiosity, we’ll provide the resources, mentorship, and opportunities to help you quickly broaden your expertise, grow into a well-rounded professional, and contribute to work that truly makes a difference.
When you join us, you will have:
- Continuous learning: Our learning and apprenticeship culture, backed by structured programs, is all about helping you grow while creating an environment where feedback is clear, actionable, and focused on your development. The real magic happens when you take the input from others to heart and embrace the fast-paced learning experience, owning your journey.
- A voice that matters: From day one, we value your ideas and contributions. You’ll make a tangible impact by offering innovative ideas and practical solutions, all while upholding our unwavering commitment to ethics and integrity. We not only encourage diverse perspectives, but they are critical in driving us toward the best possible outcomes.
- Global community: With colleagues across 65+ countries and over 100 different nationalities, our firm’s diversity fuels creativity and helps us come up with the best solutions. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from exceptional colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
- Exceptional benefits: On top of a competitive salary (based on your location, experience, and skills), we provide a comprehensive benefits package to enable holistic well-being for you and your family.
What you'll do
You will serve as a thought partner to client service leadership and consulting teams, helping turn complex ideas and insights into distinctive communications for senior Japanese business audiences.
You will bring deep communication expertise to the firm’s most strategic client and office priorities.
You will combine communication strategy with hands-on content creation—shaping the message, storyline, writing, charting, and overall craft of client, executive, and external materials. Your work may include bespoke books, white papers, articles, thought leadership, and other high-impact content, as well as the localization of global firm assets for Japan.
You will independently lead communication workstreams from concept through delivery, collaborating across the Client Hub community, including Reach & Engagement, Client Activation, the CEO Special Initiative, and Board Excellence. You will also use and help build AI-enabled tools and workflows to improve the quality and speed of content creation.
Your key responsibilities will include:
Communication Strategy and Thought Partnership- Serve as a trusted thought partner to client service leadership, consulting teams, and initiative leaders. Define the communication objective, audience, core message, storyline, format, and tone to make complex ideas clear, relevant, and compelling.
Client, External, and Visual Communication- Develop high-quality Japanese-language materials for client, executive, and external audiences. Shape the storyline, writing, page architecture, charts, and exhibits so each communication lands a clear “so what” and supports decision making.
Signature and Long-Form Content- Lead substantial communication products such as bespoke books, white papers, reports, articles, executive perspectives, and thought leadership. Draw out expert insights, synthesize research, structure the narrative, and drive the content to a polished final product.
Strategic Initiatives and Client Hub Collaboration- Support priority initiatives such as the CEO Special Initiative and Board Excellence, while partnering across Reach & Engagement, Client Activation, and other capabilities to bring the best of the firm to client and external audiences.
Japanese Market Adaptation- Adapt global firm knowledge and content for Japanese audiences, going beyond translation to ensure the business context, examples, narrative, tone, and level of detail resonate locally while preserving the original strategic intent.
End-to-End Delivery and Innovation- Own complex communication assignments from brief to delivery, managing contributors, reviews, approvals, and specialist resources. Apply generative AI and help build AI-enabled tools or workflows that improve content quality, speed, and scalability while maintaining firm standards.
Your background
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.
- 5+ years of relevant experience in communication strategy, content development, thought leadership, journalism, editorial, corporate communications, or a related field, with experience leading complex content or communication projects end to end.
- Communication Strategy and Business Judgment: Ability to quickly understand complex business topics and translate objectives and insights into a clear communication approach across audience, proposition, message, storyline, format, and tone.
- Demonstrated fluency in using generative AI to improve research, synthesis, ideation, drafting, editing, localization, charting, and quality assurance; able to build or help develop AI-enabled tools and workflows that elevate content quality and speed
- Confidence and credibility to work with Partners, Senior Partners, client service leaders, consultants, and experts; able to ask incisive questions, provide constructive challenge, and build alignment around the final communication
- Strong problem-solving, project-management, and collaboration skills, with the ability to lead ambiguous workstreams independently, manage multiple contributors and reviews, and deliver rigorous work in a fast-paced environment
- Ability to operate with a firm-wide, top-management perspective, taking end-to-end ownership, and treating firm and client priorities as their own. Proactively identifies what is needed, makes sound judgments, and pioneers new approaches rather than waiting for direction
- Exceptional Japanese writing and storytelling skills, with strong judgment in headlines, page architecture, charts, and exhibits. A portfolio demonstrating original authorship and substantive content shaping is required.
- Native-level language skills in Japanese with exceptional writing skills for senior business audiences; business fluency level language skills in English to work with global colleagues, experts, and source materials.