We’re at the halfway point of 2026, a good moment to pause and take stock of performance.
Last month, PRWeek published its Top 150 league table. The headline numbers aren’t pretty. Nominal growth across the market was just 3.7%. After inflation, that’s 0.3%. One in three agencies cut headcount.
And yet, in that same market, a handful of agencies grew by more than 40%.
The World Cup is in full swing this summer, and the best teams are proving that winning isn’t down to one moment of brilliance. It’s preparation, capability and consistent execution. The same is true for the agencies pulling ahead in PR and comms.
So we went looking for the answer to a simple question: what’s actually separating the winners from everyone else?
Introducing the Growth Accelerator Assessment
To find out, we built the Growth Accelerator Assessment (GAA), a proprietary framework scoring a select group of outperforming agencies across 10 capabilities tied to long-term, sustainable growth. Things like value proposition, intellectual property, strategic advisory, AI adoption and culture.
The key distinction here is that the GAA measures capability, not revenue. Revenue tells you what happened last year. Capability tells you what’s likely to happen next.
No single agency has it all figured out
One of the clearest findings is that no agency dominates every Growth Accelerator, and the agencies with the highest GAA scores aren’t always the fastest growing ones. That’s by design. The strongest performers win in different ways: some through creativity, others through data, strategic advisory, proprietary IP or AI capability.
What they share is deliberate investment in the capabilities that are harder to copy, easier to scale and increasingly valuable to clients.
Three places to focus in the second half
For agency leaders, the challenge isn’t doing everything at once. It’s deciding where to focus. Three things stood out across the report:
- Sharpen your specialisation. The fastest growing agencies in our cohort narrowed their focus rather than broadening it.
- Build AI into your commercial model. The agencies pulling ahead are turning AI into products and revenue streams, not just efficiency gains.
- Invest in your own visibility. The agencies with the strongest pipelines aren’t waiting to be discovered. They have a clear point of view and a consistent presence in the conversations that matter.
Read the full findings
The Sprint Partners Half Time Review sets out the detail behind all 10 Growth Accelerators, with best-in-class examples and the strategic choices behind each agency’s success.
To receive your copy today please email lynn@sprintpartners.co
