McQueenie Mulholland, 2026
Clarity is now the scarce asset.
McQueenie Mulholland did not begin as a consultancy model. It began as a freelance partnership.
Two people, from different disciplines, working closely together around a shared belief: that communication only becomes valuable when it is connected to something real. A strategy. A decision. An objective.
Over time, the business evolved quickly, and like many agencies of its generation (in the 2010s), we expanded in response to demand. More services. More delivery. More capability. Strategy, PR, campaigns, data, design, digital, content, marketing, media, websites, production, consultancy. The modern agency model rewarded breadth, and for a period that made complete sense.
We became increasingly close to what would traditionally be described as a “full-service” agency. And then the landscape changed. Not suddenly but it became obvious that the tectonic plates were shifting and structural change was inevitable.
As the media environment continued to fragment channels multiplied, content accelerated, attention shortened and trust weakened. The distinction between marketing and communications blurred almost completely – particularly in digital environments where message, medium and audience became inseparable from one another.
At the same time, the agency world reshaped itself around those changes. Large agencies continued to scale with smaller specialist agencies becoming increasingly focused and niched down. However, in the space in the middle (broad, generalist delivery) began to hollow out. If your agency found (finds) itself in this middle space you’re up against abundant competition (particularly in delivery execution) where budget predominately dilutes strategy.
That realisation changed the way we thought about our own business. Because the future increasingly did not belong to agencies trying to do everything. It belonged to organisations capable of helping clients understand what mattered, why it mattered and what should happen next.
It meant that the value for agencies unable to produce at scale moved upstream towards positioning, judgement, interpretation, narrative and strategic direction.
In many ways, McQueenie Mulholland in 2026 is not a reinvention; it is a return to the part of the work that always mattered most.
Today, we operate as a deliberately small, senior-led strategic consultancy; working at the point where brand, marketing and communications need to come together – and not as isolated functions.
We help organisations do three things well:
Define and express who they are (brand);
Frame how they are understood (communications)
Deliver against meaningful objectives (marketing)
That may sound simple, but it rarely is. Most organisations are not short of activity but instead short of coherence.
The challenge is often not producing more communication, but understanding which communication matters, which audiences matter, which signals matter, and what the organisation is actually trying to achieve underneath the noise – the old fundamentals.
That is where we work. Not at the surface level of marketing theatre, but at the point where leadership, reputation, positioning and delivery intersect.
Our approach is structured, but not formulaic. Thoughtful, but practical. Responsive, not performative. Most projects move through four broad movements (phases):
1. Listen
Before strategy comes understanding. We listen properly – to leadership teams, stakeholders, tensions, ambitions, contradictions, history and context. Often the most important part of the work is identifying what has not yet been properly articulated.
2. Frame
Once the problem becomes clearer, the work shifts towards positioning and interpretation. We help organisations frame who they are, what they stand for, where they sit in the landscape around them and how that should be expressed coherently.
3. Make
Ideas only become useful when they travel. This is where strategy becomes tangible – through communication, campaigns, systems, messaging, content, design, structures or delivery mechanisms that move the work into the real world.
4. Handover
We are not interested in dependency models. The objective is to leave organisations clearer, more capable and better aligned than when we arrived; with practical direction that leadership teams can continue to own.
Those principles now shape not only how we work, but also who we work with. Today, McQueenie Mulholland operates in two ways:
Client consultancy
Senior-led strategic work for organisations that need clarity around brand, positioning, marketing or communications. These are engagements structured in the traditional agency formats – fees for project input that is defined around objectives and practical outcomes.
Venture partnerships
In a small number of cases, we work alongside founders, organisations or emerging ventures where we believe the idea, ambition and people have genuine long-term potential. In those situations, we may contribute strategically in return for a share in the (equity) outcome itself.
The model is different but the thinking is not. In both cases, the work remains the same – clear thinking, strong positioning, practical direction.
Fifteen years into the business, we have become more convinced of something that once felt counterintuitive; clients do not need more agencies producing more activity, they need people capable of understanding complexity, bringing structure to ambiguity and helping them move forward with confidence.