A global FMCG group had grown to 120+ agency relationships across 40+ markets, with overlapping scopes, duplicated buying and no single view of what it spent on marketing services. Local P&Ls protected local rosters, so the centre had influence but no leverage.
VA moved the group to a tiered lead-agency-plus-specialist ecosystem on harmonised scopes and rate cards, with governance that gave the centre real leverage — rolled out market by market and measured against one baseline.
VP Global Marketing, Head of Marketing Operations, Head of Indirect Procurement
The strategic problem
Years of local autonomy and acquisitions had left a 30-brand group with 120+ agency relationships across over 40 markets. Scopes overlapped, the same capability was bought many times over, no lead partner anchored the network, and no one could state what the group paid for marketing services in total. Local P&Ls protected local rosters; the centre had influence but no leverage.
Diagnose & Design
VA ran a marketing & production ecosystem audit building the first group-wide spend mapping & cost baseline across 40+ markets, with structured interviews with brand and market leads to surface how work really flowed, then a gap & maturity assessment that segmented the roster by value contribution and isolated duplication and tail spend, and a market benchmarking of fees to expose where the group was paying above external references for comparable scopes.
Ecosystem & Remuneration
Partner ecosystem design produced a tiered operating model – a nucleus of Tier-1 lead partners with global remit and curated Tier-2 specialists – with roster rationalisation (from 90 to 22), common harmonised scopes through scoping & SOW design, remuneration model design with harmonised rate cards, and a governance design (RACI) that gave the centre real leverage over the markets; AURA/Scoping Tool and AURA/Strategic Mapping Expectation structured the composite tender that tested best-of-breed, lead-agency and holding-company options.
Rollout & relationship management
Contracting & onboarding formalised the new terms centre-to-market, and handover, rollout & commitment tracking – with AURA/Planner back-planning the rollout to the two go-live dates – verified that the commitments negotiated at tender translated into actual delivery; VA’s relationship management kept the model stable through the full transition, not just at launch.
Execution Oversight
Bid governance and production cost validation ensured that the commercial discipline designed into the remuneration model held in day-to-day execution; VA validated the final commercials, installed governance cadences across markets, and ran wrap & final reconciliation to close the baseline gap and confirm realised saving.
Performance Measurement
KPIs set in governance design are evaluated via partner performance evaluation on a 90/180/360 appraisal cadence across the lead and specialist tiers, with cost saving and cost avoidance reported separately and one global view of marketing-services spend (today AURA delivers closure reports; full performance measurement is on the roadmap). Illustrative: 18% reduction in base cost, 12% cost avoidance on management overhead from fewer, better-governed relationships, 60% smaller roster.
Why VA
Rationalising a roster is common; making a lead-plus-specialist model hold across 40 markets is not. VA links diagnosis to a governed operating model and to the measurement that keeps it honest, so the saving compounds rather than eroding within a year.
Common questions
What is a lead-agency-plus-specialist operating model?
It is a tiered structure in which a small nucleus of Tier-1 lead partners carries global remit and a curated set of Tier-2 specialists is retained for specific capabilities — replacing a sprawling, market-by-market roster with harmonised scopes, one set of rate cards and clear decision rights.
How does consolidating the roster reduce cost without losing local relevance?
By removing duplicated scopes and tail spend while keeping specialists where markets genuinely need them, then governing the model centrally so the value compounds instead of eroding — local execution stays close to the market while commercial control sits with the centre.
How is the model kept stable across 40+ markets?
Commitments negotiated at tender are tracked into live delivery, partner performance is evaluated on a 90/180/360 cadence, and one view of marketing-services spend keeps the baseline honest — so the operating model holds rather than drifting back to local rosters.