What were the 2025 highlights at Shimek?
2025 was a strange year for many, but it turned out to be one of Shimek’s strongest years since our founding 14 years ago. While our core business remains communications and public relations, a significant portion of our activity involves paid media and broader marketing support.
While we are seeing a move towards clients desiring an agency that can cover a broader marketing communications spectrum, it is still common for a single client to need help across multiple disciplines. For instance, we assisted one brand through communications with one agency, sports partnerships with another, and full-scale creative and media with a third.
There has also been a meaningful increase in repeat engagements, which is always gratifying.
Just as important, 2025 was fun. Shimek has evolved from a one-person operation into a true team. Sarah now leads marketing and much of our strategic work, we’ve brought on interns, and we launched a newsletter that has quickly become an important extension of our voice and community.
Steve at a breakout session during Climate Week in New York.
What were market changes Shimek adapted to?
2025 wasn’t simply a year of “market change,” it was a year of uncertainty, upheaval, and a constant sense of “hurry up and wait.” It kept us busy and required us to stay nimble. More than ever, Shimek was able to support communications and marketing leaders who were operating with fewer resources and leaner teams. Our ability to step in, reassure, and help drive agency and consultant reviews became especially valuable.
While we did see an increase in AI-related leads and opportunities, it was market uncertainty and clients’ needs to right-size agency partners, not technology, that ultimately drove much of the business.
What are industry execs saying behind closed doors?“You should write a book.” If I did, my sources would dry up. Marketing, communications, and HR executives have long memories and remarkable stories often centered on agencies and agency leadership. Some are jaw-dropping (and, more often than not, corroborated). While there’s never been a shortage of those tales, a recurring theme over the past year stood out: “Doing what I can.”
By that, I mean corporate decision-makers involved in agency reviews increasingly—and passionately—stayed true to their personal values, regardless of their employer’s public position. In conversation after conversation—and in nearly every review—agencies associated with greenwashing, tobacco, or governments with questionable human rights records (pick your poison) were quietly removed from the candidate pool.
Very few of these leaders post their views on LinkedIn. But make no mistake: their values are showing up clearly where it counts—inside the decisions they make.
What do you hope stays the same?
One thing became very clear in 2025. While artificial intelligence continues to play a growing role in both professional and personal lives, there has never been a greater need for genuine human interaction.
Like most, Shimek operates in a world of CRM systems, spreadsheets, and AI tools, however, our true strength has always been, and will continue to be, the human touch. Nothing replaces a great brainstorming session with a client, except perhaps matching that client with the right consultant or agency and watching a strong partnership flourish over time.
Personally, the coming year will mean a bit less AI and databases, and more people, travel, podcasts, events, and small gatherings over coffee/cocktails.
This topic could be addressed on many levels. From the agency perspective, one longstanding issue is the sharp decline in meaningful feedback following pitches. Five or six years ago, feedback was far more common and far more useful. That needs to change. One of the ways we add value is by sharing candid, constructive client feedback with agencies, helping them improve and refine their approach.
Budgets are another overdue conversation. Fifteen-twenty years ago, the idea that a starting PR budget should be $10,000 per month became entrenched (it was low then). The world has gotten expensive! Today, we actively counsel our small-to-midsize clients to think in terms of $15,000–$20,000 per month as a more realistic starting point. Encouragingly, this is being better received than many might expect.
The same applies to marketing budgets. We are clear with clients when a stated budget will not support their goals, and in some cases, we choose not to move forward rather than set anyone up for failure.
Finally, those who follow my LinkedIn posts know that I remain deeply engaged with organizations like Clean Creatives and similarly aligned groups around the world. Companies and agencies must continue to support DEI and sustainability efforts. We will continue to back those working toward meaningful impact—and to push back against greenwashing.
What do you want for 2026?I want Shimek to continue growing—not just as a business, but as a force for ethics, transparency, and sustainability within the marketing and communications industry. We will continue to support friends and colleagues who are exploring new career paths (you’re in good company), as well as those looking to do work that creates positive change. And, as always, keep it fun and rewarding for everyone.
I’ll leave you with a funny and all to real LinkedIn post from the legend, Rob Mayhew.
Over winter break, college students all over the country and I were interrogated by friends and family. “What classes are you taking?” “What are you learning about?” “How were exams?” I swear I talked more about school than anything else. I’m not complaining, though. I could talk anyone’s ear off about my classes- I’m convinced I have the best, most fun major ever.
I just got back to Chapel Hill to start my fourth semester at UNC in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, where I’m studying on the Advertising and Public Relations track. My classes are fun and engaging, taught by current or past professionals who have years of industry experience under their belt.
One course I’m taking this semester is called Entertainment/Celebrity Public Relations. We’ll be discussing the “tea”, or gossip, surrounding celebrities, Hollywood, influencers, and pop culture. We’ll be learning how to handle a client being “canceled”, how to plan an influencer brand deal, and hear from Justin Timberlake’s publicist on what she did after the wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. This is a new class that has been introduced now that social media has become the primary channel for publicity, influencers are becoming A-list, and staying ahead of digital trends is now essential for effective public relations.
I’m also in a PR case studies course where we’ll be delving into the most successful, and the most disastrous, PR decisions in history, from the Tylenol poisonings to Spotify Wrapped. This class has evolved with the industry, now emphasizing political and ethical responsibility of brands, as well as the reality that social media now places much of a brand’s identity in the hands of the public.
The marketing and AD/PR landscape is rapidly evolving, and college curricula are evolving as well to make sure that students, the next generation of industry professionals, are gaining the skills they need to be successful.
- Susanna Mann, Shimek Intern
Each month, Shimek's Sarah Daniels invites someone she thinks you should know into "The Salon", a space to share ideas around vocation vs. corporate ladders with individuals making a difference in the best way they can. The December episode features Kristen Berry, the author of We Don't Talk About Carol. Click above to hear how she balanced her 9-to-5 in the PR world with writing a full-length novel.
Shimek is built on connection. We’ve counseled more than 1,700 companies on their agency search and marketing strategy at no cost to the them.
Reach out anytime, we'd love to be a resource.
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