Consolidation is a growth lever in the agency ecosystem

Marketing has become complex: new channels, new technologies, new disciplines. The answer has been specialisation—a dedicated agency for every task, specific expertise for every channel. Yet, what long passed for best practice is increasingly hitting its limits.

Monday morning, campaign alignment: creative agency, performance agency, PR, social, internal stakeholders. All the agencies deliver. All the agencies are good partners. And yet, it takes weeks for an idea to translate into real impact. The problem is rarely the quality of individual partners; the problem is the system in which they work together.

How did SMEs ended up in this situation?

This trend is understandable. Marketing has become increasingly complex—with new channels, technologies, and disciplines. The logical and correct response has been specialisation: a dedicated agency for every task and specific expertise for every channel. Yet, the approach long considered “best practice” is increasingly revealing its limitations.

In practice, we frequently observe:

• parallel budgets lacking clear, unified oversight
• overlaps in channel planning, production, and media
• duplicated roles (e.g., strategy, creative, account management)
• extensive coordination efforts without genuine integration

The result is a system preoccupied with itself. More specifically: companies make significant investments but lose impact in the gaps between the various parties involved.

The real losses occur in the spaces between them.

The key insight from our project work is that today, companies do not lose out because of their agencies—they lose out between their agencies. What happens in that space in between is measurable:

• Strategies become diluted
• Messages lose consistency
• Decision-making cycles lengthen
• Budgets are used inefficiently
• Responsibilities remain unclear
• Coordination efforts are duplicated or triplicated

The Misconception: Less Expertise Is Not the Solution

The obvious reaction for many companies is to reduce the number of partners. Fewer agencies, a smaller budget, more control. In my view, however, this approach falls short.

The problem is not specialisation; it is fragmentation. I believe neither in a return to the traditional full-service agency, nor in an uncontrolled collection of specialists. The most effective models we see today lie somewhere in between: highly specialised partners operating within an integrated setup characterised by clear roles, defined governance, and sensible processes.

Integration Instead of Fragmentation

Today, successful companies distinguish themselves not by the number of agencies they use, but by the quality of their orchestration. What works:

• clearly defined roles and responsibilities
• consolidated mandates rather than fragmented individual projects
• centralised steering instead of scattered, isolated decisions
• an operating model that actively enables integration (including across markets and business units)

Through consolidation and optimized setups, it is possible to reduce internal management effort and production costs, and optimise agency fees

The key point: These results are achieved not through cutbacks, but through a more suitable structure, processes, and governance.

Why AI Is Accelerating This Trend

Artificial intelligence is currently changing the rules of the game in marketing. Content is created faster. Campaigns are executed more efficiently. Analyses are becoming more precise. Yet, this very shift moves the bottleneck: when content is produced in hours rather than weeks, the problem is no longer production—but coordination.

AI makes organisations more transparent. It also reveals where structures are no longer working. Fragmented setups do not improve as a result; instead, they become more visible—and inefficient.

Consolidation is not a cost-cutting program – it is a driver of growth.

Consolidation is often viewed merely as a cost-cutting measure. That does not do justice to the subject. Beyond the savings achievable through such projects, additional levers emerge:

• consistent brand management and messaging across markets and business units
• greater speed (time-to-market)
• improved overall performance of marketing investments

It is not about cutting agencies; it is about sensibly consolidating responsibilities.

The hardest part isn’t the decision itself.

The challenge lies beyond mere analysis. Many marketing leaders know their current setup is suboptimal. The real hurdle is implementation: changing existing structures, rethinking long-standing relationships, aligning internal stakeholders and making clear—and sometimes uncomfortable—decisions.

This requires courage—and a clear vision of the desired future state.

The crucial question, then, is not how many agencies a client has, but whether the current model accelerates the achievement of marketing goals or slows things down during the Monday morning alignment call.

This article was first published in “Werben & Verkaufen“.

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