Woolworths joins wave of major creative reviews reshaping agency market

Australia’s agency market is entering one of its busiest and most closely watched periods in years, with Woolworths becoming the latest major brand to put its creative business into review amid a broader shake-up across banking, retail and media.

The supermarket giant confirmed it has launched an RFP process for a lead creative agency partner across Australia and New Zealand, opening up one of the country’s biggest creative accounts at a pivital moment.

“We have commenced an RFP process for a lead creative agency partner for Woolworths Australia and New Zealand,” a Woolworths spokesperson said. “We continue to work with our existing partners throughout this process.”

The review lands just two months after Commonwealth Bank entered the market for creative services, while Westpac recently parted ways with BMF after only a year, leaving one of Australia’s largest banks without a lead creative agency partner.

A CommBank spokesperson previously told this publication the bank regularly reviews supplier partnerships as business needs evolve and is “currently considering a range of partnerships”.

Taken together, the moves point to a far more active agency market than Australia has seen in recent years, particularly among the country’s largest advertisers.

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Unlike previous waves of agency reviews largely driven by cost-cutting, the latest activity appears more closely tied to structural change inside large organisations themselves.

“There are a number of drivers currently shaping the pitch market,” TrinityP3 founder Darren Woolley said.

“The first is cost-of-living pressure and budget pressure on marketers, alongside procurement using tenders to drive lower agency fees in a highly competitive market.”

Woolley said major disruption across holding companies was also forcing brands to reassess agency structures, while independent agencies were gaining credibility as viable alternatives to larger networks.

“And finally is the promise of AI integration, which offers both productivity improvements and therefore lower agency fees, while also helping level out the differences between larger and smaller agencies,” Woolley said.

“It is a confluence of market influences that is causing the level of big-end market pitching.”

The disruption is widespread. Retailers, banks and major consumer brands are reassessing how creative, media, data, loyalty and customer experience functions connect together, particularly as AI, retail media and platform ecosystems reshape marketing operations.

For Woolworths, the timing is significant. The retailer remains under intense public and regulatory scrutiny over pricing and trust, while simultaneously expanding deeper into loyalty, retail media and broader digital commerce ecosystems.

The creative review also marks the first major marketing move under recently appointed CMO Sean Barrett, who joined the retailer earlier this year from US supermarket giant Albertsons.

M+C Saatchi has held Woolworths’ creative account since 2016 and expanded its remit across multiple areas of the business over the past decade. According to reports, the agency has opted not to repitch for the account, opening the door to a long list of competitors.

The review also comes at a time when agency holding groups themselves are simplifying structures and pushing integrated operating models. WPP, Omnicom and Publicis have all done it. Earlier this week, dentsu confirmed it had joined the party and would fold all local media brands into a single dentsu structure in Australia, citing client demand for clearer accountability and greater scale.

While no formal review has been confirmed at Westpac, the bank’s split from BMF and ongoing questions around agency structure have added further momentum to speculation that the country’s largest advertisers are reassessing long-standing agency relationships.

Like CommBank, Westpac has remained cautious in its public commentary around agency arrangements. When approached for comments, a Westpac spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on specific agency briefs.”

For agencies, the clustering of large-scale reviews across banking, retail and financial services is likely to intensify competition for a shrinking number of high-profile creative relationships, particularly as brands look for simplified, integrated models capable of moving faster across media, creative, data and customer experience.

What happens next may say as much about the future of agency models as it does about the brands now reshaping them.