Year in Review 2025: Marijke Timmers

Every year, StopPress catches up with a group of industry leaders from across Aotearoa to talk about the year that was. From the highlights and the lowlights to their favourite foods, fruits and Christmas traditions, they give us a little insight into 2025 as well as a look forward to 2026.

Marijke Timmers is founder of The Marketing Collective.

What was the biggest change to happen in the world of marketing in 2025?

The rapid, mainstream adoption of AI changed every area of business this year, including marketing. But, without a clear understanding of the problem AI was solving in their marketing, many small businesses defaulted to using it for content creation. We saw many service providers jump on this demand too, offering prompts to generate more content, faster than ever before (reminiscent of the ‘copy my formula’ tactics we saw as ineffective shortcuts during Covid). This led to ‘slop’ becoming the Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.

What we’re now seeing is a disconnect and lack of engagement with AI content, because everything has started to look and sound the same. As a result, Meta introduced rules around AI-generated content, including labeling AI posts and reducing the reach of low-engagement AI content. TikTok also added tools to let users limit AI-generated content in their feeds.

What this proves is that the fundamentals of marketing still matter, even in an AI world. It’s all about connection. Once brands lose the human connection, they lose trust and eventually, their customers. I’m looking forward to the pendulum swinging back toward humanness in 2026.

What was your personal or professional highlight?

This year, The Marketing Collective grew our small business community through an incredibly engaging 10 Day Marketing Makeover Challenge. We registered over 250 small business owners from across New Zealand and provided expertise across all major marketing disciplines: strategic branding; design and production; copywriting and content creation; Google and AI search; social media; and public relations.

The response from the community was overwhelming, proving small businesses were craving this kind of connection. It was an absolute pleasure to be able to support them during such a difficult year and to facilitate the sharing of ideas and feedback, building partnerships and collaborations, and purchasing from others within the group.

I’d had people tell me for years that I was a natural community builder and it’s a term and role I’d resisted. But seeing it all unfold in front of us, in real time, made me realise that this is exactly what small businesses need right now. It was also like having a live focus group in your pocket – this community helped me deepen my relationship with the small business community and enhance the services we offer through a deeper understanding of the people we serve. It also helped me to realise how our clients could build communities too – to bring people, ideas and products or services together in more meaningful ways.

What is the best part of working as a collective?

Running a business can feel quite lonely. Even if you have a team of people, as the owner or leader of the business, it all starts and ends with you.

Working as a collective not only gives our clients expertise across every marketing discipline, it also gives each one of us a tribe of other business owners to lean on and learn from. It gives us partners who care about building something together – people with similar values and philosophies in business – who help you grow and have your back.

I believe this kind of collaborative model is the future of business. We don’t have the overheads of an agency and we’re all senior level marketers – ex-agency or corporate leaders. Accessing our expertise directly is more affordable for small businesses, and they can trust that they’re getting a real person with real experience. We’re all about enabling and empowering small businesses to either DIY with clarity or outsource with confidence.

How did AI feature in your 2025?

As above, AI played a huge role in marketing this year. I believe it is a fantastic tool to help marketers and businesses harness insights from their data.

Within my own business, I used AI to help me analyse and summarise my lead and customer data, to understand my market and target audiences even more deeply. Using the highly engaged chat in our 10 Day Challenge, AI outlined the key challenges facing the small business community in real time so we could use these insights to tailor the challenges to the community’s needs.

What are you most looking forward to next year?

As mentioned above, a return to more human content. ‘Realness’ has become a rarity and I think our audiences, communities and customers crave it. They deserve this from us.

People follow people. If you want to get noticed – want to stand out more to those who matter and have your services an easy yes – you need to connect with your audiences more deeply. That requires a deeper connection and understanding of yourself first.

While most marketers will tell you that marketing starts with your customers, the way we coach marketing is that it always starts with the people behind the brand. Your humanness is your differentiation.

This is what I’m most looking forward to – witnessing even more of these ‘aha’ moments with our clients and helping them take (or retake) their brands to market in ways that feel aligned with who they are and the capacity they have.

I’m looking forward to helping even more small businesses next year stop churning out more, and start cultivating more connection through marketing strategies and repeatable systems that are less about the hustle and more about the harvest.

Quick fire five

Favourite Christmas tradition?

Every year, my partner and I give each of our children four gifts – something they want, need, wear and read. When we first started this tradition, our kids were quite small and we asked them what they ‘needed.’ None of them had an answer because everything they mentioned was a want, not a real need.

I run a children’s charity in Cambodia and over the years, we’ve involved our children in our charity work. They’ve seen first-hand what real needs are. So, the ‘need’ in their Christmas gift pack is a charity of their choosing. These have become some of my favourite chats with my kids – hearing about their choices of charities and the reasons behind them.

What was your favourite project that you worked on in 2025?

Our 10 Day Marketing Makeover Challenge!

Favourite place in Aotearoa?

Waiheke Island. I’ve travelled the world and lived abroad for 15 years, and there’s nowhere on the planet like Waiheke. It’s where I’m hosting my first brand retreat in 2026 too because it’s just the most calming and tranquil place, with amazing food and wine!

Favourite book/film/tv show?

My incredible client, Tracy Manu launched her book Hononga this year. It’s a beautiful masterclass in self-reflection and of course, connection.

Favourite season?

I love the promise of spring – new shoots pushing through, hints of colour returning to the garden, lambs bouncing in paddocks and knowing that the days are getting longer and hotter from here on out.

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