Portfolio CMO evaluation criteria for Australian agency selection.
Practical evaluation criteria for PE-portfolio CMOs and operating partners selecting Australian marketing agencies for portfolio-level engagements. The questions that matter, the supporting evidence to ask for, the red flags to watch for.
Eight evaluation criteria
1. Current PE-portfolio engagement track record
Ask: "Show me 3 current PE-portfolio engagements you run today." Not historical, current. Multi-brand, with portfolio-CEO reporting cadence active. Most agencies answer with brand engagements but not portfolio engagements; the difference is significant.
2. Per-brand transparent invoicing on a real engagement
Ask: "Show me a sample monthly invoice for a multi-brand engagement." Per-brand "Digital Agency Fee" lines, per-brand hosting + media spend pass-through, shared Block Hours pool with explicit per-brand attribution. Vague answers signal the agency hasn't built the discipline.
3. BigQuery + Looker portfolio reporting capability
Ask: "Show me a sample BigQuery + Looker portfolio dashboard." Anonymised is fine. Daily refresh against multi-brand data. NL2SQL self-service for non-technical portfolio managers. Agencies running platform-native dashboards stitched into a deck don't have the layer.
4. Documented compliance pipeline
Ask: "Show me your documented AHPRA / Australian Consumer Law / AI Governance / procurement-claim review pipeline." Documented + named accountable reviewers + provenance metadata. Vague answers signal exposure accumulating.
5. Senior strategist tenure + retention
Ask: "What's your senior strategist average tenure at the agency?" PE-portfolio engagements need stable senior bench across multi-year engagements. High senior turnover breaks the relationship intelligence + governance discipline.
6. Vendor due-diligence pack
Ask: "Send me the vendor due-diligence pack." Should include security policy, sub-processor list, data residency, incident response procedure, Privacy Act compliance attestation. Most agencies don't have this documented; PE-portfolio operations need it.
7. Multi-brand engagement architecture
Ask: "How do you structure a multi-brand engagement?" One senior strategist as portfolio anchor, per-brand line items, shared Block Hours pool, integrated compliance pipelines. Should be operationally documented, not invented per engagement.
8. Long-tenure track record
Ask: "What's your average client tenure as a number, in months?" PE-portfolio engagements need long-tenure-shaped agencies. Below 18 months average tenure suggests structural commercial pressure that doesn't fit PE-portfolio operating model.
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