Bridge Role for Marketing

Your consumer marketing experience is more relevant than you think. You're just applying to the wrong roles.

MBB have practices. I was in McKinsey's Marketing & Sales practice. Here's the structure that matters for you:

• Post-MBA generalists come in as integrative consultants with no practice attached. Integrative means a generalist consulting toolkit.
• Experienced hires like you (no MBA needed) go one of two ways. Integrative tied to a practice, so a generalist consultant but working across marketing and sales projects. Or specialist, narrow on a specific topic like martech or digital marketing. Either way you're anchored to a practice from day one.

Marketing & Sales is a practice, and consumer marketing is relevant project work. So your background is a credential for practice-specific roles. You've been aiming at FI transformation and tech strategy, where you have no edge on that CV. Instead, find the partners running those practices in your region and network with them. Look for practice-specific roles.

Same logic on the bridge role. You don't need finance exposure. You need a role that proves commercial impact in numbers: pricing, growth, commercial strategy, revenue. Whatever you take, attach hard results to it. And in my experience, an MBA is not a hard requirement to get into consulting.

Happy to jump on a quick call and map that out if useful.

Hi there,

I don't think you need to manufacture a “bridge” role here. You already work at a top global marketing agency and have consumer and marketing expertise that can be highly relevant to consulting. The issue is how you position the experience.

To bridge the gap:

Get your resume as strong as possible (professionally reviewed)

Get a strong cover letter

Network extensively

Case prep well in advance

In your current role, get the following opportunities to the largest extent possible:

Leading teams

Running projects

Working with clients

Working with senior-level leadership

Driving corporate initatives, pivots, strategies

Please don't read hard as impossible. But, don't have illusions here. You are going to have to work extremely hard. And odds are you will not succeed. Embark on the journey only if you're ready to push yourself and face potential rejection. But, who ever got anywhere by playing it safe?

I wouldn't full send for an MBA solely because you haven't found the perfect bridge role. Do it if the degree, school, cost, and wider career options make sense independently, not as a workaround for one recruiting cycle.

We're literally just covering the surface now. I highly recommend my Applications Course, which dives into all things positioning your experience, CVs, cover letters, networking, referrals, and application strategy.

Hi there,

Being screened out of corporate strategy, tech strategy, bank strategy and T2 and B4 roles is not four separate verdicts on fit, it is one verdict repeated, and it is arriving at the CV stage rather than in interviews. That is a positioning problem rather than a background problem.

A few things I would do differently:

• Rewrite three agency projects as consulting problem statements. Each one needs a client decision, a number attached to it and what happened afterwards. Agency CVs tend to describe campaigns and deliverables, and campaigns do not read as commercial judgment to a screener even when the work genuinely was.
• Treat the MBA as a pipeline question rather than a credential question. What matters is whether the experienced hire route you are applying through is open to a profile like yours in that office, which varies by office and by cycle. If it is effectively closed, an MBA buys you a different door rather than a better CV.
• Since you describe the local market as transformation and strategy work for financial institutions, I would widen geography before I widen function. A market where consumer goods is what the office actually sells is a far shorter jump than becoming credible on banks.
• Ask one person inside for the real screening reason. Most rejections at this stage are one line long in a recruiter's notes, and that line is worth more than another six applications.

Applying more widely feels like progress because the volume goes up, but a profile that is being screened out for a fixable reason only gets screened out faster the more places it goes.

Hi there, 

Sounds like you've already put in quite a bit of work in both thinking about your options and taking active steps with applying. 

What seems most realistic to me is to indeed identify this 'bridge' role. In your case, that could either be a smaller consulting company that focuses on marketing projects OR applying for the big consulting companies but specifically for their marketing practice as a specialist. Firms like McKinsey for example have a dedicated practice for this and people with your background and experience would be very valuable. 

The other thing to consider is whether your application documents, especially your CV, are written and presented in a way that highlights your skills. Especially the sort of skills that are valuable in consulting, as opposed to skills that are valuable for a marketing agency. You might want a careful pair of eyes on this. 

If you need any help, feel free to drop me a message. 

Best,
Cristian 

hey there :)

I honestly wouldn’t force a “bridge role” just for the sake of having one. Your marketing experience can still be valuable for MBB, especially if you can show strong problem solving, ownership and measurable business impact. The story matters more than having the perfect intermediate job.

If you’re applying again in a year, I’d use that year to strengthen the things MBB will actually assess: strong case skills, clear leadership examples and a convincing reason for moving from marketing into broader strategy. Networking will also be much more useful than trying to collect another job title.

I also wouldn’t rush into an MBA purely to fix the profile. If you genuinely want the MBA, that’s different, but you don’t necessarily need it to make this transition.

best,
Alessa :)

This is a real gap problem, not a prep problem. You're bridging function and domain at once, and that is hard to do in a year without leverage.

What most people miss, you're applying for roles that require the exact experience you don't have yet. Pick one narrow lane instead, something like commercial due diligence or consumer growth strategy, where marketing is an asset, not a weakness. Build your story around that.

If your firm has any internal strategy project, take it. If not, I'd start the MBA process now, in parallel, not as a backup plan.