How to Choose a Digital Creative Agency Like Deliveroo

Deliveroo is searching for a digital creative agency, with Ingenuity+ managing the review (reported 9 January 2026). That’s not “nice to have” admin. It’s a signal.

When a brand that already dominates awareness still goes back to market for digital creative, it’s usually because performance marketing alone isn’t carrying growth anymore. Costs rise, audiences get numb, competitors copy your offers, and suddenly creative becomes the multiplier again.

This matters for the British Small Business Digital Marketing series because UK startups and small businesses often wait too long to take creative seriously. They treat a digital creative agency as a polish step, not a growth system. Deliveroo’s move is a reminder: brand and performance aren’t separate lanes anymore—your creative is the engine of both.

Why an established brand still needs a new digital creative partner

A company like Deliveroo doesn’t run an agency review because it’s bored. It does it because something has changed.

Three common triggers show up when scale-ups and category leaders go shopping for digital creative:

1) Acquisition gets more expensive, so creative has to work harder

As channels mature, the easy wins disappear. On paid social and video platforms, the biggest lever left is often new angles, stronger storytelling, better offer framing, and faster iteration.

A practical way to think about it:

• If your click-through rate (CTR) drops, you can buy more impressions… or fix the hook.
• If your conversion rate stalls, you can add more spend… or fix the landing narrative.
• If your retention softens, you can discount… or fix the reasons people care.

A strong digital creative agency isn’t there to make things “look good”. It’s there to keep paid media from becoming a tax.

2) The brand needs consistency across a messy channel mix

For most UK startups, “digital marketing” means a patchwork: Meta ads, TikTok, email, a landing page builder, some organic content, maybe YouTube, maybe an influencer test.

At Deliveroo scale, that patchwork becomes chaos unless creative is managed like a product:

• Modular assets that can be resized and versioned fast
• Clear rules on tone, colour, photography, and motion
• A system for testing messages, not just formats

If you’ve found your ads, emails, and website sound like three different companies, you’re already feeling this problem.

3) Creative is now a performance variable (not a “brand” variable)

Here’s the stance I’ll take: most small businesses over-optimise targeting and under-optimise creative.

Targeting advantages shrink over time (privacy, platform automation, competition). But creative advantages compound—because you learn what your market responds to and you build a recognisable voice.

Deliveroo’s agency search is a high-profile version of what many UK businesses hit around the same time: growth demands a better creative system.

The “too big or too small” agency dilemma (and how to solve it)

Choosing a digital creative agency is awkward for startups because the risks are asymmetric:

• Go too big: you get great decks, slow turnaround, junior delivery.
• Go too small: you get speed, but not enough strategic depth or production reliability.

The fix is to stop selecting on size and start selecting on operating model.

What you actually need is a creative operating system

A good agency partner gives you repeatable outputs:

• A clear creative strategy tied to acquisition and retention goals
• A pipeline of concepts (not one “big idea” every quarter)
• Production that matches your channel mix (static, motion, UGC, landing pages)
• Testing and learning loops that turn insights into the next batch of work

If they can’t explain how work moves from idea → asset → test → insight → iteration, you’re buying vibes.

Snippet-worthy rule: A digital creative agency should reduce your marketing uncertainty, not add to it.

The 3 keys to choosing the right digital creative agency for a growth-stage UK business

If you only take one framework from this post, take this one.

1) Strategy: do they understand your growth constraints?

Most agencies say they’re “strategy-led”. Few can articulate the boring realities that decide whether your marketing works:

• Your margins (can you afford upper-funnel spend?)
• Your payback window (do you need conversion now or can you nurture?)
• Your purchase cycle (impulse vs considered)
• Your capacity constraints (can ops fulfil if marketing succeeds?)

A strong partner will ask uncomfortable questions early. That’s a good sign.

What to ask in the pitch:

1. “What do you think is the real bottleneck in our growth?”
2. “Where would you not spend creative effort in the first 60 days?”
3. “What would you measure weekly to prove creative is improving performance?”

If the answers are generic, the work will be generic.

2) Production: can they ship at the speed your channels demand?

UK small business digital marketing lives and dies on throughput. You don’t need one hero film. You need a steady flow of high-quality variations.

A useful benchmark for many consumer brands:

• 6–12 new paid social creatives per month (mix of new concepts + iterations)
• 2–4 landing page or PDP improvements per month
• 4–8 email/CRM creative updates per month (offers, templates, seasonal pushes)

For January, that might mean:

• “New year reset” messaging (without sounding like everyone else)
• Budget-sensitive framing (value, bundles, subscriptions)
• Shorter, clearer landing pages for colder audiences

What to ask: “How many assets can you produce per month, and what’s your process for versioning?”

If they can’t answer with numbers and workflow, you’ll wait weeks for basics.

3) Learning: do they build a test-and-iterate loop you can trust?

Creative that doesn’t learn is just content.

The agency should help you define:

• A testing cadence (weekly or fortnightly)
• A naming system for hypotheses (so results don’t get lost)
• A simple scorecard (CTR, CVR, CAC, MER, retention signal—whatever fits your funnel)
• A monthly “what we learned” readout that directly informs the next production sprint

What to ask: “Show me an example of a learning agenda you ran for another client—what did you test, what changed, what improved?”

No examples? You’re likely getting pretty assets with no compounding advantage.

What Deliveroo’s agency search suggests about 2026 digital marketing

We don’t have the full brief from the source (it sits behind a login), but we do have enough to interpret the direction: more investment in digital creative capability.

Here’s what I expect more UK brands will prioritise in 2026—and what startups should copy early.

Creative that’s designed for multi-format distribution

The “make one video and cut it down” approach usually leads to awkward edits and weak hooks.

Better approach:

• Design for 6–15 second attention first
• Build modular scenes and text frames
• Plan vertical-first compositions
• Make the first 1.5 seconds do the heavy lifting

This is practical, not trendy. It reduces production waste and improves performance.

A tighter connection between brand and conversion

The old split (“brand campaign” vs “performance ads”) is fading. Strong brands are:

• Using brand cues in direct-response ads (colours, sonic cues, characters, recurring lines)
• Writing landing pages that sound like the ads that sent the click
• Treating CRM as a brand channel, not just discounts

That consistency is a conversion tool.

Agency partners who can collaborate with in-house teams

Many businesses now have at least one internal marketer, a freelancer editor, or a small content team.

So the best digital creative agencies don’t try to own everything. They:

• Set the creative system
• Build the core templates and brand rules
• Produce higher-complexity assets
• Enable internal teams to execute day-to-day

That hybrid model is often the sweet spot for UK SMEs.

A practical agency brief you can steal (one page)

If you’re a startup founder or marketing lead, you’ll get better pitches if you give a tighter brief. Here’s a simple structure.

1) Business goal (one sentence)

Example: “Reduce CAC by 15% over 90 days while holding conversion rate steady.”

2) Target audience (specific)

Example: “London commuters ordering dinner 2–3x/week, value speed and reliability, medium price sensitivity.”

3) Core offer + proof

Example: “£X off first order + delivery tracking + 30-minute average delivery time in zone.”

4) Channels and volumes

Example: “Meta + TikTok + YouTube shorts; 10–15 new creatives/month; weekly iterations.”

5) What success looks like

Example: “CTR, CVR, CAC, and 30-day repeat rate; weekly test results and monthly learning summary.”

6) Constraints

Example: “No pricing changes until March; limited ability to expand delivery radius; brand tone must stay witty but not sarcastic.”

Agencies do better work when you remove ambiguity.

People also ask: common questions founders have about hiring an agency

Should a small business hire a digital creative agency or a freelancer?

If you need one-off execution, a strong freelancer can work. If you need a system—strategy, production cadence, testing, and consistency—an agency (or a small studio) usually wins.

How long should you give a new agency before judging results?

You can judge process in 2–3 weeks (speed, communication, clarity). You can judge performance impact in 6–10 weeks if you’re running enough tests and spending enough to see signal.

What’s a reasonable monthly budget for digital creative?

For many UK SMEs, it’s less about a magic number and more about output. A useful starting point is budgeting for 8–12 assets/month plus iteration, then scaling once the learning loop is working.

Where this fits in British Small Business Digital Marketing

This series is about making digital marketing work when budgets are tight and attention is tighter. Deliveroo’s agency search is a reminder that the companies with the most data and spend still prioritise creative—and they treat agency partnership as a strategic decision.

If you’re growing a UK business in 2026, don’t wait until your paid channels stall to take creative seriously. Build the operating system now: clear strategy, fast production, real testing, and consistent brand cues.

The question worth asking your team this week: if your targeting got 10% worse overnight, would your creative be strong enough to keep growth on track?