TL;DR

REL Field Marketing, now rebranded to Smollan UK as of January 2026, is a full-service field marketing agency with 1,000+ dedicated staff serving enterprise FMCG clients across 60+ countries. Brand Allies is a managed-service shopper advocacy platform launched in 2024, using a 250,000-strong UK shopper community to generate verified product reviews on retailer websites, run crowdsourced store audits, and handle discreet product withdrawals. They are structurally different businesses that solve different problems, and many brands will benefit from using both.

Why This Comparison Matters

If you’re a UK FMCG brand manager or shopper marketing lead searching for “REL Field Marketing vs Brand Allies,” you’re likely trying to figure out which provider fits your needs before committing budget. The short answer: these two companies barely overlap. One runs dedicated field teams. The other mobilises a shopper community. Understanding the difference saves you from comparing apples to oranges and helps you build the right execution stack for your brand.

Before going further, there’s an important update many searchers won’t know about yet.

Explore Brand Allies’ review generation service to see how the shopper advocacy model works in practice.

What Is REL Field Marketing? (Now Smollan UK)

REL Field Marketing was a full-service field marketing agency founded in 1995, headquartered in Winnersh, Berkshire, with a second office in Dublin. For nearly three decades, it built a reputation as one of the UK’s most awarded field marketing agencies, winning more Agency of the Year titles at the Field Marketing and Brand Experience (FMBE) Awards than any competitor. It was recognised as one of the UK and Europe’s Best Workplaces every year since 2015.

In January 2026, REL Field Marketing officially became Smollan UK. This wasn’t just a name change. REL had been part of the Smollan network since 2015, and the rebrand completed a full integration of local capability with global infrastructure. Nick McGrath, Managing Director for Western Europe, called it “the natural evolution of our journey.”

Scale and Clients

Smollan UK (formerly REL) operates with over 1,000 colleagues across the UK, approximately 80 of them based at the Berkshire support centre. Through the Smollan network, they now have reach across 60+ countries. Client names include Nestlé, Unilever, Diageo, Kenvue, Haleon, Heineken, Adidas, and Samsung.

Core Services

Under the Smollan umbrella, the service offering spans four pillars:

• Engagement: sampling, experiential marketing, active selling, retail staff training, event management
• Environment: merchandising, compliance, amplification, POS management, availability monitoring
• Experience measurement: mystery shopping, auditing, customer satisfaction surveys, brand audits
• Analytics: perfect store dashboarding, multi-market reporting, retail analytics, ecommerce insights

Business Model

Smollan UK operates a traditional agency model. Brands contract dedicated or flexible field teams deployed to specific retailers on retainer or project-fee arrangements. The agency is accredited to call on all major UK retailers. This model works well for long-term programs where the same stores are visited regularly and store-level relationships with managers matter.

On Glassdoor, REL Field Marketing holds a 3.8 out of 5 rating based on 134 reviews, with 64% of employees saying they would recommend the company to a friend. Dedicated brand account roles tend to receive the highest praise.

What Is Brand Allies?

Brand Allies is a managed-service shopper advocacy platform for UK FMCG brands, launched in 2024 as the retail and FMCG sub-brand of staffing marketplace Redwigwam (RWW Group Limited). Rather than employing field teams, it draws on Redwigwam’s community of 250,000 UK-based shoppers who buy, try, and review products on retailer websites, conduct in-store audits, and carry out discreet product withdrawals.

Three Service Lines

Online product reviews. Shoppers purchase products through normal retail channels and post verified reviews on retailer product detail pages (PDPs). Covered retailers include Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, Ocado, Boots, Iceland, Holland & Barrett, Amazon, and TikTok Shop.

In-store activations. The same shopper community runs field audits checking promo compliance, POS visibility, distribution gaps, and on-shelf availability. This builds on technology piloted with Kellogg’s through the Redwigwam platform.

Discreet product recalls. Shoppers physically remove faulty or recalled product from shelves without triggering a public alert, functioning closer to a market withdrawal than a formal recall.

Business Model

Brand Allies operates on a pay-per-verified-review pricing model for its reviews service, with bespoke pricing across all three service lines. There are no retainers. Brands pay for completed, verified outcomes. Client logos include Coca-Cola, Strong Roots, Little Moons, Bol Foods, and Jordans.

REL Field Marketing vs Brand Allies: Key Differences at a Glance

This comparison table is the fastest way to see where these two providers sit relative to each other.

The single clearest differentiator: Smollan UK does not offer online product review generation. Brand Allies does not offer dedicated field teams or experiential marketing. These are fundamentally different tools for different jobs.

For a deeper look at how dedicated field teams compare with crowdsourced models on cost, speed, and quality, see this field team vs crowdsourced audits guide.

When to Choose a Traditional Field Marketing Agency

A traditional agency like Smollan UK makes sense when your brand needs:

Long-term in-store execution. If you’re running a 12-month merchandising program across 2,000 stores, you need reps who build relationships with store managers, know the planogram by heart, and can fix compliance issues on the spot. Planogram compliance rates often hover as low as 40-50% without active monitoring, according to industry data from Field Agent, which means consistent presence matters.

Active selling and sampling. Experiential campaigns, in-store demonstrations, and retail staff training require trained, branded personnel. A crowdsourced shopper model cannot replicate this.

Multi-market coordination. If your brand operates across the UK, Ireland, and continental Europe, Smollan’s 60+ country network provides centralised reporting and coordinated execution that a UK-only platform cannot match.

Deep retailer relationships. Traditional reps visit the same stores week after week. They develop working relationships with department managers. For categories where shelf position and secondary display placement drive significant volume, this relationship layer is hard to replace.

The trade-off is cost. A standard shelf audit from a third-party field service runs $20-50 per store visit. A brand auditing 500 stores monthly through a dedicated agency can spend $10,000-25,000 per month. For more on measuring the return on that spend, this retail audit ROI benchmark guide breaks down the formulas.

When to Choose a Crowdsourced Shopper Platform

Brand Allies and similar crowdsourced platforms solve a different set of problems. The right scenario looks like this:

Building Review Volume on Retailer PDPs

This is the gap that Brand Allies was built to fill. The average grocery review rate hovers between 0.1% and 0.3%, compared to 2-5% on Amazon. Research from the Spiegel Research Center found that products displaying five or more reviews are 270% more likely to be purchased than products with none. And quarterly analysis of UK grocery has shown that 85% of products desperately need new, up-to-date reviews, with only four manufacturers averaging more than 20 reviews per SKU on Sainsbury’s.

Most FMCG products sit below what the industry calls the “credibility threshold” of 20-30 reviews. Smollan UK, for all its strengths, does not address this problem. Its focus is physical retail execution. If your conversion rates on Tesco.com or Ocado are suffering because your PDPs show two reviews from 2023, you need a reviews service, not a field team.

See how Brand Allies generates verified reviews across major UK retailers.

For brands trying to understand how review volume connects to retailer SEO and search ranking on retailer sites, the connection is direct: products with more reviews and higher ratings tend to rank higher in on-site search results and are more likely to be included in retailer media placements.

Rapid, Scalable Store Audits Without a Retainer

If you need to check promo compliance across 300 Tesco stores next week but don’t have a retained field team, a crowdsourced model can mobilise faster and cheaper. According to industry analysis, the crowdsourced model often saves 75% in costs compared to deploying a dedicated rep. You pay for completed, verified audits rather than billable hours that include drive time between locations.

The quality argument cuts both ways. Traditional reps are incentivised to make their assigned stores look good, which can introduce reporting bias. Crowdsourced auditors are everyday shoppers with no personal relationship to the store. They capture raw, unfiltered reality. But they also lack the training and store-specific context that a dedicated rep brings.

Discreet Product Withdrawals

This is a niche but important service. If a batch needs to be quietly pulled from shelves (think a labelling error or a minor quality issue that doesn’t warrant a full FSA alert), Brand Allies can deploy shoppers to physically remove product. No other traditional field marketing agency offers this as a standard service line.

Challenger Brands Without Enterprise Budgets

If you’re a growing FMCG brand without the budget for a Smollan UK retainer, pay-per-outcome pricing removes the fixed-cost risk. You scale up for a launch, scale back when you don’t need coverage, and never pay for idle capacity. For more on this, the guide to retail execution for challenger brands lays out the options clearly.

Can You Use Both?

Yes. And increasingly, that’s exactly what large FMCG brands do.

Industry practitioners report that a combination of methods tends to be most effective: crowd for broad coverage, agency for strategic depth, and internal teams for sensitive target markets. The logic is straightforward. A brand like Nestlé or Unilever might use Smollan UK for dedicated merchandising and active selling in top-tier accounts, while simultaneously using a platform like Brand Allies to build review volume on retailer websites and run tactical compliance checks in secondary stores.

Here’s a simple framework:

The two providers are not competitors in any meaningful sense. They sit at different points in the shopper journey, use completely different workforce models, and address different brand pain points. Using both is not redundant. It’s complementary.

For brands evaluating multiple providers, this comparison of Brand Allies and Field Agent adds further context on how crowdsourced platforms differ from each other.

The Rebrand Factor: Why “REL Field Marketing” Is Fading From Search

Anyone searching for REL Field Marketing in mid-2026 should understand that the brand no longer exists as a standalone entity. The relfm.com domain still functions, but all operations now run under Smollan UK. This matters for procurement: your contract will be with Smollan, not REL. Your account team may be the same people, but the corporate structure, reporting lines, and service catalogue have been fully integrated into Smollan’s global operation.

If you’re mid-tender and comparing REL with other providers, update your documentation. The REL name will continue to appear in older case studies, award citations, and Glassdoor reviews, but operationally, it’s Smollan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is REL Field Marketing still operating?

No, not as a standalone brand. REL Field Marketing was fully integrated into Smollan UK in January 2026. The team, services, and client relationships continue under the Smollan brand. The rebrand reflects a decade of integration since REL joined the Smollan network in 2015.

Does REL/Smollan UK offer online product reviews?

No. Smollan UK’s services cover in-store execution, merchandising, compliance, experiential marketing, mystery shopping, and analytics. Online product review generation on retailer websites is not part of their service offering. This is the most significant gap in their portfolio relative to Brand Allies.

What pricing model does Brand Allies use?

Brand Allies uses a pay-per-verified-review model for its reviews service, with bespoke pricing across all three service lines (reviews, in-store activations, discreet recalls). There are no retainer fees. Brands pay for completed, verified outcomes.

Can Brand Allies replace a field marketing agency?

Not entirely. Brand Allies can handle store audits and review generation, but it does not offer dedicated field reps, active selling, experiential marketing, retail staff training, or multi-market European campaigns. For brands that need those services, a traditional agency remains necessary. Brand Allies is best understood as a complement to (not a replacement for) a full-service field marketing agency.

How large is Brand Allies compared to Smollan UK?

Smollan UK has over 1,000 employed colleagues, operates in 60+ countries through the Smollan network, and serves clients like Nestlé, Unilever, and Diageo. Brand Allies launched in 2024 with a community of 250,000 registered UK shoppers, backed by its parent company Redwigwam’s 10-year track record in staffing. The scale difference is significant, but the models serve different purposes.

Which provider is better for a new product launch?

It depends on what the launch needs. If the priority is in-store sampling, secondary display placement, and retailer relationship management, Smollan UK is the stronger fit. If the priority is building review volume quickly on Tesco.com, Sainsbury’s, or Ocado to hit the credibility threshold before marketing spend drives traffic to those PDPs, Brand Allies addresses that directly. Many brands will want both. For a practical walkthrough, see this guide on getting more product reviews for UK FMCG brands.

Are Brand Allies reviews authentic?

Brand Allies shoppers purchase products through normal retail channels and post reviews on the retailer’s own platform. The reviews go through each retailer’s standard moderation process. The approach uses real shoppers making real purchases, though brands should be aware that compensated reviews sit at the edge of ASA CAP Code guidelines and some retailer terms of service, meaning occasional review rejections can occur.

What about in-store compliance, where does the overlap sit?

Both providers offer in-store compliance checks, but through very different mechanisms. Smollan UK sends trained, dedicated reps who visit stores on a recurring schedule and can fix issues on the spot (restocking shelves, correcting POS placement). Brand Allies sends everyday shoppers who photograph and report compliance status but don’t intervene with store staff. For a full breakdown of what to measure, the in-store compliance service page outlines the crowdsourced approach in detail.