Why Most “Best Agency” Rankings Fail the Moment Brands Go Global

International expansion is no longer a growth experiment. McKinsey’s growth research found that companies expanding internationally generated 1.9 percentage points more annual total shareholder return than their industry peers, and that companies with healthy home-market growth captured an additional 2.6 percentage points of annual shareholder returns through geographic expansion.

At the same time, marketing leaders are under pressure to justify every pound spent. According to Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, marketing budgets for 2025 remain flat at 7.7 percent of overall company revenue, the same share as in 2024, underscoring the pressure on CMOs to prioritise efficiency over scale. In this environment, agency selection is not a branding exercise. It is a risk decision with board-level consequences.

Despite this shift, the way international marketing agencies are ranked and shortlisted has barely changed.

Most “best agency” lists rely on revenue, headcount or awards as indicators. These signals are easy to collect, easy to market and easy to misunderstand. Crucially, they say very little about whether an agency can reproduce growth across multiple international markets.

This assessment applies a narrower, evidence-led lens: which agencies have demonstrated repeatable, efficient international growth, supported by publicly documented case studies, sustained client relationships and cross-market execution.

How This Assessment Was Grounded in Verifiable Evidence

Rather than relying on self-submitted data or reputation signals, this analysis prioritised indicators that editors, buyers and analysts can independently verify:

• Public international case studies demonstrating delivery across two or more geographic markets
• Multi-year client relationships, used as a proxy for sustained performance rather than launch success
• Evidence of growth achieved without proportional budget inflation, favouring operational discipline over scale

Agencies whose international credentials relied primarily on awards, directory placements or single-market success stories were excluded.

This immediately reduced the candidate pool.

Traditional Agency Ranking Methodology Is Flawed

Is agency income a true indicator of how good the agency is, or just how well-connected and well-funded it is, or how good they are at sales? Similarly, is headcount a true indicator of how good the agency is, or is it just a metric to determine scale?

Awards nowadays are a PR exercise, and most require paid award submissions, which dilutes their credibility as an indicator of agency marketing prowess – awards just tell us how good agencies are at PR and self-promotion.

Are the large global agency conglomerates good at international marketing, or do they simply have an international presence grown through acquisition, while individual country shops work almost independently? Do they succeed because of brute force – deliver big results when given a big budget?

Dismissing these commonly-used agency ranking (and consideration) factors, is logical when you dig a bit deeper.

Industry data supports this scepticism. Award programmes typically require paid entry fees and category submissions, inherently favouring agencies with larger marketing budgets. Revenue and headcount correlate strongly with sales reach and acquisition, but weakly with delivery quality across markets, particularly when localisation, regulation and attribution complexity increase.

In international growth, repeatability matters more than scale. Launching once is common. Launching again, efficiently, in a different regulatory and cultural environment is not.

What the Data Consistently Elevates

When performance evidence is weighted over visibility, three indicators repeatedly separate high-performing international agencies from the rest:

• Repeated market entry across multiple regions, not a single flagship expansion
• Longevity of outcomes, measured through retained relationships and sustained growth narratives
• Efficiency of execution, where improved performance is not explained solely by increased spend

These indicators are visible in public documentation even when exact revenue figures are not disclosed, and they align closely with what international buyers actually value.

Top 5 Agencies with Exceptional International Growth Prowess

Using the strict parameters of ranking agencies for repeated multi-market entry and growth success, client retention, and performance efficiency, the top 5 agencies are:

1. AccuraCast (UK): Success stories include unified multi-market growth for large global enterprises including PwC, Club Med and WTW, as well as market entry and expansion for scale-ups, that have now become globally recognised brands such as UFC, Sportradar and DataCore.
2. Mother (UK): Proven international expansion cases include Innocent Drinks, Uber’s growth in EMEA, and Monzo’s early international positioning.
3. Forsman & Bodenfors (Sweden): Repeatedly helped Nordic brands grow beyond their home markets. Success stories include Oatly, Acast and IKEA.
4. Jellyfish (UK): Before becoming part of Brandtech, built a reputation for taking digital-first brands such as Spotify and Ticketmaster from their home country to Europe.
5. Ogilvy (US): Their work with Dove is considered one of the most impressive case studies of scale and longevity, boosting sales for a brand that was already international.

Across these agencies, a clear pattern emerges: documented international execution across multiple markets and years, spanning both enterprise organisations and high-growth brands. That breadth is uncommon in an industry where many agencies can point to one international win, but few can demonstrate several.

What This Ranking Shows That Others Do Not

When rankings strip out prestige bias and prioritise evidence, the distribution changes sharply.

Only a small subset of agencies can demonstrate repeatable international growth across more than two markets, sustained beyond initial launch phases. Fewer still show this across different client maturity stages, from scale-ups to global enterprises.

This ranking reflects that narrowing. It is not a popularity chart. It is a performance filter.

The practical implication for decision-makers

For organisations planning international expansion, the takeaway is clear: replace surface-level metrics with evidence-based scrutiny.

Ask for comparable market examples. Examine how long results were sustained. Assess whether success depended on budget escalation or operational discipline.

The agencies that can answer those questions clearly tend to be the ones that deliver.

Transparency and Scope

This analysis is based exclusively on publicly available case studies, documented international work and observable client outcomes. No self-submitted data, paid placements or award citations were included in the assessment. For more reports like this, visit the European Business Magazine newsroom.

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