I started The Marketing Syndicate in 2003. That’s 22 years of FMCG campaigns, product launches, shopper marketing programs and promotional mechanics that had to actually shift product off shelf, not just win awards.
The agency’s changed. I’ve changed. The industry’s changed about seventeen times.
But what keeps me here hasn’t.
The Bit That’s Actually Hard
The hardest part of running an agency isn’t the deadlines or the budgets or even the pitches where you know you nailed it and still don’t get the call.
It’s the balancing act.
Delivering creativity that moves product. Accountability when things don’t go to plan. And staying calm when your client’s MD wants the campaign live yesterday and the retailer just changed the planogram.
You can’t do that alone. And you definitely can’t do it with people who don’t care whether it works or not.
Why Clients Keep Coming Back
We’ve never worked on retainer. Our work is the retainer.
If a campaign delivers, if a launch hits target, if a promotion drives the trial they needed — they come back. If it doesn’t, they don’t. That’s the deal.
A lot of our client relationships run into double figures now. Not because we’re locked into contracts, but because the work keeps landing and we keep showing up.
Here’s the thing about FMCG: brand managers move around. A lot. We’ll work with someone at one business, they’ll move to another brand, and six months later we’re briefing in a new campaign for them at the new place.
We’re often the continuity. The agency that knows how their last launch went, what worked in their promotional calendar, where the gaps are in their shopper strategy. We’re the gel that helps the next person hit the ground running instead of starting from scratch.
That’s the repeat purchase model. And it works because the work works.
What Hasn’t Changed
After 22 years, I still get a kick out of seeing a campaign go live in-store. Still love the debrief call when a client tells you they smashed their sales target. Still rate the moment when someone on the team cracks a brief that looked impossible an hour earlier.
That’s why I still love this.
Not because it’s easy. Because when you’re solving real problems for FMCG brands that actually matter to people’s weekly shop, and the work keeps bringing clients back, there’s not much else like it.
If You’re After That Kind of Partnership
If you’re an FMCG marketer looking for an agency that’s been in the game long enough to know what actually works at shelf — and measures success by whether you come back, not whether you’re locked in — you’re in the right place.
We built TMS on repeat purchase. The work speaks, or it doesn’t.
Twenty-two years in, that’s still the standard.
Looking for an FMCG agency that earns your business every time? The Marketing Syndicate works across shopper marketing, promotional marketing, product launches and brand strategy. Get in touch to talk about your next move.