Just five of the 24 agencies previously on the roster have retained their place.
The COI has ditched direct and sales promotion shops including Iris, Joshua, Carlson and RMG Connect in favour of specialist sponsorship agencies such as Karen Earl Sponsorship, Fast Track and Brand Rapport, as well as media firms such as Carat.
The COI currently spends £2.5m a year on sponsorship activity, but views it as a growing area for government communications.
The sponsorship roster is responsible for securing tie-ups across TV, radio, press and the web. Recent activity includes a radio campaign on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry to promote the Quality Mark Scheme for builders.
Roster agencies will also develop branded content, a technique that government departments have begun to use in earnest in the past year. To this end it has appointed specialists such as BBH Content and OMD Fuse to the roster.
'We have seen areas such as advertiser-funded programming evolve as a means of reaching audiences,' said the COI's head of sponsorship, Daphne de Souza. 'The aim is to raise awareness of issues and influence behaviour.'
The agencies that survived are Capitalize, Drum PHD, Markettiers4dc, MEC Sponsorship and SponsorVision.
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