Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) Moves In-House and Wins In-House Agency of the Year with -lution

Written By Gen Chatfield

Redesigning an enterprise agency model isn't just about cutting external fees, it's about building an agile, connected content engine that boosts speed, drops production costs, and scales globally.

The Challenge

Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) is one of the world’s largest global wine companies, operating across more than 70 countries with a world-class portfolio of brands including Penfolds, Wolf Blass, 19 Crimes, Pepperjack, and Squealing Pig.

Despite its global market presence, TWE’s marketing architecture relied entirely on a traditional external agency model across media, creative, and production. This reliance created critical operational constraints:

  • Siloed Execution & Speed-to-Market Delays: Relying exclusively on external partners slowed production timelines, making it difficult to rapidly react to fast-moving cultural moments.

  • Cost & Production Inefficiencies: Managing multiple third-party agencies across brand portfolios drove up production costs and created financial friction across media spends.

  • Integration Barriers: A lack of direct integration between creative and media capabilities limited TWE’s ability to drive cross-channel effectiveness and scale digital media performance.

TWE engaged -lution to review its entire media, creative, and production ecosystem to drive media effectiveness, accelerate speed to market, and build a modern, integrated agency model.

The Solution

Utilising our proprietary Evolution framework, -lution partnered with TWE leadership to design and execute a three-phase transformation that established a hybrid agency model anchored by a new in-house agency, Splash.

  • Capability Architecture & Build: Designed and built internal capabilities for digital media, creative execution, and production within the new in-house agency, Splash.

  • Agency Ecosystem Redesign: Restructured the external agency model, refining scopes of work and commercial terms. Retained tier-1 broadcast creative and media strategy with external partners while transitioning digital media, tactical creative, and production in-house.

  • Digital Enablement & Platform Selection: Formulated a digital enablement strategy (CDP, CRM, and data strategy) and evaluated, selected, and implemented cloud-based project management, workflow, and Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms with Localised Asset Management capabilities.

  • Integrated Planning & Operations: Designed and facilitated TWE’s annual Integrated Activity Planning process to align cross-functional teams and channel strategies.

The Results

We respect our client’s commercial sensitivities so don’t publicly share our results. We can share that Splash has gone on to win In-House Agency of the Year in Australia and expanded its remit to serve TWE's global operations from Australia. If you’d like to know more, contact us.

Gen Chatfield
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