The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving 641: Former Bain & Company Director Michael Farmer — Differences Between McKinsey, Bain and BCG, Strategy Consulting, Helping Ad Agencies and Their Clients Navigate Change (Strategy Skills classics)
Apr 2, 2026
Michael Farmer, former Bain director and author who advises ad agencies, shares stories from his time at BCG, Bain and McKinsey and why their cultures differ. He recounts leaving to start Farmer & Company, helping transform Huge with productized services, and the method that got him to finish a book. Short, candid takes on consulting, agency change, and leadership trade-offs.
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How A Brazil Case Shaped A Consulting Career
- Michael Farmer described moving from Harvard/McKinsey summer to join BCG and then working in Brazil where he learned Portuguese in two months to run a large client engagement.
- That year in Brazil exhausted him due to language barriers and heavy analytic work, prompting a shift to a dean role before later joining Bain and relocating across Europe.
Treating An Ad Agency Like A Factory
- Farmer's first advertising client (Ogilvy London) lacked basic production data, so he treated the agency like a factory and built a system to measure work, people, and costs.
- That eight-week project produced the operational metrics he used to advise ad agencies for 30 years.
Why Boutiques Must Specialize To Survive
- Farmer realized boutique firms must pick niches because global branded consultancies became costly and dominated big strategy work.
- He lucked into advertising, an industry that couldn't afford big firms and rewarded his small-firm deep operational approach.
