From big tech’s involvement at the FIFA World Cup to the way Northern agencies are responding to mounting commercial pressure, collaboration is becoming a competitive advantage like never before. Bridgette Kemp, Head of Channel Partnerships at Propello Cloud, argues the businesses that will thrive over the next five years will be those willing to build alongside others rather than go it alone…
The 2026 FIFA World Cup may be remembered for what happens on the pitch. But for me, one of the most interesting contests is happening behind the scenes.
This tournament is becoming one of the biggest live demonstrations yet of AI, data and technology being deployed at global scale. Google has put Gemini at the centre of its World Cup activity, with team partnerships including Argentina, Brazil, France and the USA, while fans are being offered richer digital experiences through search, maps, live scores and AI-enabled tools.
The point isn’t football. The point is what this tells us about business.
No single organisation, however powerful, can now build every capability it needs fast enough, cheaply enough or well enough to keep pace with change, especially in this dizzying AI-fuelled world we’re all living in. The organisations that win are not always the ones that try to own every piece of the puzzle.
Increasingly, they are the ones that know what they are brilliant at, know where they need help, and build the right partnerships around them.
That matters for every business. But it matters particularly for agencies and marketing businesses in the North.
Right now, many businesses are facing serious headwinds. Client budgets are tighter. Margins are under pressure. AI is changing expectations almost daily. In-house teams are growing. Consolidation is happening. Everyone is being asked to do more, move faster and prove value more clearly.
When that happens, most companies instinctively reach for one of three strategies.
The first is what I call the Last Man Standing approach. This is where a business decides to dig in, protect margin, compete harder and outlast the field. In theory, there is logic to it. If everyone else falls away, the remaining business may eventually benefit.
But it is a high-risk strategy. It rewards endurance more than innovation and it assumes you have the financial reserves to survive the difficult middle period, when revenue is declining and the market is moving elsewhere.
For most businesses, that is an impossible move.
The second strategy is to Ride the Wave. This is what we saw with companies that moved early into streaming, or agencies that are now moving quickly into AI. Instead of resisting disruption, they lean into it. They spot the current early and build capability before it becomes a survival requirement.
That can be really powerful but it is not easy. Riding the wave requires major investment, speed and an appetite for risk. It means building new skills, adopting new tools and accepting that not everything will work.
In AI specifically, it also raises a question of differentiation. If every agency is using the same tools, how will you stand apart?
Then there’s the third option, and the one I believe is most powerful right now. It’s co-opetition.
Co-opetition is competitors, or near competitors, choosing to collaborate in defined areas because the combined outcome is stronger than anything either could achieve independently.
Done well, co-opetition is deliberate, commercial, and mutually beneficial. It starts with the confidence of knowing your own value well enough to share the table without feeling threatened.
For agencies, this is especially important. The pressure to be full-service is real. Clients want joined-up thinking. They want creative, data, technology, loyalty, performance, insight, content and delivery. But the cost of genuinely being full-service has never been higher.
Too often, agencies respond by trying to own everything. They stretch their capability too thin. They hire ahead of demand. They build services that sit outside their core strength. Or they say yes to work they cannot deliver as well as they would like.
For me, the smarter play is different. Know where you are world-class. Be honest about where you are not. Then build trusted partnerships that make the whole offer stronger.
That partner might be a technology platform. It might be a data specialist. It might be another agency with complementary expertise. In some contexts, it might even be a business you would normally consider a competitor.
I have seen this throughout my career, particularly in technology markets, where businesses rarely scale by trying to build everything from scratch. The biggest players acquire capability when they need it. But most agencies do not have an IBM or Cisco-style balance sheet. They cannot simply buy their way into every new specialism.
Partnership gives them another route. It allows businesses to extend their offer without taking on the full cost and risk of building an entirely new division. It creates new revenue opportunities. It gives clients a stronger, more complete proposition. And, when structured properly, it creates stickier, longer-term relationships.
The real value comes when a partnership helps an agency solve a bigger problem for the client, measure impact more clearly, or create a recurring revenue stream around something that previously would have been project-based.
That changes the relationship. Instead of being brought in for one campaign and then waiting for the next brief, the agency becomes more embedded. It has more reasons to speak to the client. It has more ways to demonstrate return. It has more opportunity to shape what comes next.
For agencies across the North, I think this is a huge opportunity. The North has brilliant creative, digital and marketing talent. It also has a business culture that, at its best, understands the value of relationships, trust and getting things done without unnecessary ego.
But those agencies also face the same structural pressures as everyone else, often without the same resource depth as some larger London and international competitors. That makes co-opetition a really practical decision.
It is a way to build scale without pretending to be something you are not. It is a way to compete for bigger opportunities without diluting your core.
Of course, boundaries matter too and co-opetition only works when everyone understands what is in scope, what remains proprietary, where interests align and where they diverge. It needs commercial clarity. It needs trust. It needs grown-up conversations about ownership, revenue, responsibility and client relationships.
But the alternative is not risk-free. Doing nothing is a choice. Trying to build everything yourself is a choice. Chasing every new trend at once is a choice. But all of those choices carry cost.
The businesses that define the next five years will not simply be the ones that outlast the market or shout loudest about innovation. For me, they will be the ones that build intelligent ecosystems around themselves.
The lesson I’m seeing from the World Cup is not that every business needs to become a technology company. It is that even the biggest stages now depend on multiple specialists working together to create something none of them could deliver alone.
That is where agencies need to pay attention. The future doesn’t belong to businesses that sit in silos, it belongs to those confident enough to open the door, share the table and build something bigger than themselves.
Bridgette Kemp is Head of Channel Partnerships at Propello Cloud, a customer rewards SaaS platform spun out of Preston-based integrated marketing agency Workhouse in 2020. Propello Cloud helps businesses build rewards and partnership programmes designed to increase value for end-customers and reduce churn. The business supports 15 million users and works with more than 60 clients across eight geographic markets.
