Our Observatory

is where VA Consulting shares its reading of the marketing ecosystem — research, benchmarks and field notes on agencies, production, media, spend, remuneration and AI, from a team that works inside the system every day, not from the sidelines.

Report & Framework

In-depth reports and frameworks on marketing transformation.

Report & Framework

Cost Saving vs Cost Avoidance

Cost saving is money taken out; cost avoidance is money never wasted. Why confusing the two is the most expensive error in measuring marketing’s value.

Report & Framework

Marketing’s Invisible Tax

Marketing waste hides as an invisible tax: the cost of complexity that outgrew its governance. How to make it a number with spend mapping and a cost baseline.

Report & Framework

The Operating Model Beats the Campaign

The marketing operating model — not the next campaign — is where the 2026 advantage sits. Why it decides cost, value and whether AI helps or hurts.

Insight

Sharp perspectives on marketing governance, spend and the operating model.

Insight

Retail Media Is a Spend You’re Not Governing

Retail media is the fastest-growing line in the budget and the least governed. The transparency, measurement and conflict questions advertisers must ask now.

Insight

When Thought Leadership Hallucinates

In 2026 two of the world’s largest firms withdrew marketing reports built on AI-fabricated citations. Why verifiable evidence is now the scarcest asset.

Insight

GEO Is Not an SEO Tactic

Generative Engine Optimisation is sold as the new SEO. Framed correctly, GEO is about who governs your brand’s visibility inside AI systems.

Insight

Agentic AI: The Real Question Is Who Governs It

The agentic AI debate is stuck on capability. The decisive question for marketers is governance: who directs the agents, who’s accountable, who absorbs them.

Insight

From Vanity Metrics to a Discipline of Value

Most marketing measurement reports activity, not value. The 2026 shift: from dashboards that describe to a measurement discipline that decides.

Insight

The Content Supply Chain Has a Governance Problem

As AI multiplies content, the constraint isn’t creativity or cost — it’s governance: who owns what, who’s liable, and whether the value can be proven.

Insight

Production Is a Step, Not a Silo

Production is treated as a cost centre to squeeze. In an end-to-end model it’s a governed step — linked to remuneration upstream and measurement downstream.

Insight

In-housing Without Illusions

In-housing marketing is neither a cost panacea nor a threat. It’s an operating-model decision: which capabilities belong inside, which in the ecosystem, and why.

Insight

Roster Rationalisation Beyond Savings

Cutting the agency roster to save money is easy and usually wrong. How to design a roster that compounds value — by role, not by headcount removed.

Insight

The Pitch Is a Tool, Not a Product

The healthiest agency pitch is often the one you don’t run. When a pitch is the right tool for the decision — and when it just restarts the cycle.

Insight

AI Is Rewriting Agency Labour. Your Fee Model Hasn’t.

If AI changes who does the work and how fast, agency fee models built on hours and headcount are obsolete. Why remuneration is where AI gets real.

Insight

Talent Follows the Operating Model, Not the Tool

The marketing capability gap isn’t a shortage of AI skills. It’s an operating model that asks people to govern an ecosystem it never trained them to run.

Insight

Why “Doing More With Less” Is Destroying Value

Applied bluntly, the savings mandate doesn’t create marketing efficiency — it manufactures waste and erodes the brand’s edge. What real efficiency looks like.