As disruption rattles ad holdcos, tech consultancies step up as full-stack marketing partners
As brands demand personalisation, ROI, and real-time intelligence, tech consultancies are emerging as the new full-service partners, blending creativity, data, and enterprise-wide transformation. But are brands buying?
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For decades, the creative and marketing landscape was firmly dominated by advertising agencies — the traditional custodians of storytelling, brand identity, and cultural influence. But a seismic shift is now reshaping that order. The world’s largest technology consultancies: Accenture, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Deloitte, IBM, and even TCS, are aggressively pushing into creative, experience, and marketing services. Their expansion comes at a pivotal moment, as major advertising holding groups like WPP and IPG grapple with revenue declines and pursue sweeping restructuring efforts.
This reshaping is not a temporary trend; it marks one of the most profound structural changes since the rise of digital advertising. With AI now powering everything from content production to customer analytics, marketing is increasingly becoming a technology-driven discipline. And the firms that have long powered enterprise transformation are suddenly positioned at the center of the marketing universe.
Why Tech Firms Want What Agencies Have: The Emotional Engine of Brands
“Marketing is the closest thing to magic most businesses can buy,” says Gautam Reghunath, co-founder & CEO of Talented. Consultancies, he says, have owned the rational side of the business for years, now they want the emotional side too.
This “land grab” is driven by client demand.
As Tech Mahindra CMO Peeyush Dubey explains, the modern brand no longer wants just great storytelling; it wants experiences built on data, automation, real-time intelligence, and measurable results.
“Brands today want experiences rooted in data, personalization, and real-time intelligence,” he says. Marketing has become tech-led, and consultancies already “own” the technology stack.
Examples abound: Accenture Song (formerly Accenture Interactive) is now one of the world’s largest creative networks, fuelled by acquisitions like Droga5, Karmarama, The Monkeys, and dozens of design/experience studios; Tech Mahindra’s acquisition of BORN Group brought global commerce design and experience-building capabilities; Deloitte Digital has built creative design studios, including the celebrated Heat agency; Infosys’ WongDoody has evolved into a 20+ studio global network driving experience design, immersive content, and brand strategy.
The logic is simple:
If you already reengineer a company’s digital systems, customer journeys, and data architecture, extending into creative and marketing becomes a natural progression.
As Santosh Singh, thought leader and marketing transformation specialist puts it: “You cannot market a digital transformation you did not design.”
"While traditional ad agencies sold stories, tech firms now sell proof. They do not just promise growth; they measure it. When the same team that re-engineers a customer journey also crafts the narrative, credibility follows and success happens. This is already visible across many success stories," he notes.
Why Clients Are Actively Seeking Tech-Led Marketing Partners
CMOs today live under pressure: pressure to prove ROI, justify budgets, and show measurable impact. Brand-building for its own sake is no longer enough.
Tech-driven partners give clients a sense of control and clarity. “Clients want partners who help them sleep at night,” Reghunath says. When traditional setups feel “slow or cluttered,” consultancies promise integration and results, from real-time analytics to automated workflows.
Dubey explains that clients increasingly want single partners who can link marketing with business transformation, new revenue models, and customer experience. Rather than multiple fragmented vendors, they want a full-stack transformation partner.
Consultancies shine here. They can modernize customer journeys, operationalize marketing stacks, and build systems that enable real-time personalization. This appeals not just to CMOs, but CIOs, CTOs, CFOs- the full C-suite.
As ad holdcos merge in billion-dollar unions, tech players are becoming the new-age storytellers, say experts- agile, AI-literate, and deeply wired into customer experience.
Can Consultancies Really Do Creativity?
The industry’s most debated question isn’t about ambition- it’s about capability.
Reghunath cautions that while consultancies can hire top talent, they often lack the “strange, electric environment that makes ideas appear.” Creativity requires chaos, instinct, and risk-taking - elements that do not always gel with systems-driven, process-heavy cultures.
Dubey argues the old assumption - that technology limits emotional storytelling, is outdated. He believes AI and data expand the creative canvas by uncovering deeper motivations and enabling highly personal, contextual storytelling.
"Consultancies are evolving creative capabilities through specialized studios, experience design teams, AI-powered content engines, and partnerships with global talent networks. When combined with their strength in data architecture and digital transformation, this creates a powerful model where creativity becomes more informed, dynamic, and scalable. Rather than restricting imagination, technology expands the canvas, helping brands build meaningful, human-centric stories with greater precision and impact," he explains.
Examples support this view: A tech firm that built the UI/UX for a luxury carmaker’s infotainment system then went on to market it successfully, merging engineering with storytelling; Accenture Song’s work with NRMA Insurance and Burger King blends cultural creativity with platform-driven insight; Infosys Aster uses Unreal Engine 3D, AR/VR, XR, digital twins, and AI-powered content engines to build immersive brand experiences, turning fans of a global racing brand into “lifelong customers”.
Where the Models Diverge and Why Agencies Aren’t Going Away
Consultancies are not replacing agencies; they are reshaping the market around a new centre of gravity. Traditional agencies still excel in cultural resonance, brand identity, social-first content, and long-form storytelling.
The new model is hybrid: Consultancies win in data, systems, experience design, transformation, and scale. Agencies win in emotional instinct, cultural thinking, and creative craft.
The future, as Santosh and Dubey both point out, belongs to partners who can unify both worlds.
Shubhranshu Singh, business leader, cultural strategist, and columnist, calls this the emergence of a “new advisory architecture” that fuses commercial intelligence, brand strategy, and creative execution into one growth proposition. AI does the heavy lifting: optimizing content, automating workflows, generating insights. Human advisors focus on pattern recognition, decision-making, narrative framing, and originality.
AI has automated huge swathes of marketing: planning, reporting, optimization, even production. This has eroded margins for agencies while giving consultancies a competitive advantage - they already own enterprise AI stacks.
Infosys Aster is a prime example of this convergence: 50% increase in repeat buyers; 30% reduction in marketing operations cost; and 40% increase in sales for clients.
By integrating AI-powered data platforms, predictive insights, digital commerce engines, and immersive design technologies, Infosys demonstrates why marketing is no longer a standalone function, it's an intelligence-driven discipline built on digital foundations.
The Future: When Builders Become Storytellers
The industry is moving from “make it beautiful” to “make it believable and measurable.”
Storytelling isn’t dying. It is becoming infused with engineering. As Santosh Singh says, the next wave of brand value won’t be built by agencies or algorithms alone but by teams that can “engineer transformation and narrate it with heart and soul.” The firms that succeed will recognize that creativity is not a process, it’s a culture. Those who blend code with craft, data with instinct, proof with poetry, will define the next era of marketing.
In this world, the strongest partners won’t just build transformation.
They will tell its story. And that is exactly why tech consultancies are no longer waiting at the periphery of marketing, they are moving to the center stage.
