PRWeek has produced 19 Power Lists and I have been lucky enough to oversee 16 of them in my tenure leading the editorial function at PRWeek US.
One thing I have learned is that you can never please all the people all of the time when doing something like this. And that is not the intention of the Power List, anyway. We want to stimulate debate and feedback about our choices and what they say about the state of the PR industry.
By ranking the top 50 communicators from 1-50 we do not cop out by presenting the list in alphabetical order. We make our calls and we put them out there for people to discuss, argue about, disagree with and, sometimes, even agree with.
This is a serious list and we certainly don’t take our decisions lightly. But no one should take it so seriously that they lose their mind over it. It’s one list decided by one group of people who observe the industry closely that reflects what is going on in our fast-changing world at a snapshot in time.
In the heady days when this list appeared in print, our principal fear was that one of our Power Listers would leave or be fired in the time between us going to press and the magazine hitting the streets. Indeed, this happened several times.
One notable occasion I recall was getting a phone call from the folks at the New York Post’s “Page Six” desk when we put Toyota comms lead Julie Hamp on the Power List in 2015 just before she was arrested and thrown in jail in Tokyo on suspicion of importing prescription painkillers. It must have been a slow week for the gossip column. Hamp was later released without charge, though she had already stepped down from her role at Toyota.
As I told mainstream media reporters when we named United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz our PRWeek Awards Communicator of the Year in March 2017, one month before a United passenger was forcibly dragged off the plane and the resulting video went viral, we are not psychic. And things happen.
But there are undoubtedly many, many deserving candidates who don’t make the list in any particular year. And there are people who do make it who think they should probably be placed higher in the pecking order.
The list reflects power, influence, excellence, effectiveness and the ability of the PR pros named to it to provide senior counsel to their CEOs and C-suite leaders or their clients in the case of PR agency folks.
Our list contains many individuals who cut their teeth in politics, on both the Republican and Democrat sides of the aisle, including Walmart’s senior George W. Bush adviser Dan Bartlett; another Bush adviser Joel Kaplan at Meta; TikTok’s former New York Governor George Pataki and Sen. Alphonse D’Amato adviser Zenia Mucha; Spotify’s former Bush housing adviser Dustee Jenkins; and Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
United Airlines’ Josh Earnest was former White House press secretary in the Obama administration, as was Airbnb’s Jay Carney; former Clinton and Al Gore adviser, General Mills’ Jano Cabrera; the NFL’s Katie Hill, former communications director for President Obama; Disney’s Kristina Schake is a former Biden, Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton adviser; longtime DNC adviser Doug Thornell, now CEO at SKDK; Clinton and John Kerry adviser, IBM’s Jonathan Adashek; former Obama for America digital adviser; and Procter & Gamble’s former DNC committee director of press relations Damon Jones.
There are also at least two U.S. Marine veterans, Microsoft’s Frank Shaw and Meta’s Joel Kaplan. You have to be made of tough stuff to prosper in the modern world of communications and skills learned in politics and on the campaigning trail, as well as having the type of discipline required to serve in the armed forces, transition well to the PR beat.
Let me deal with three Power Listers whom I know we’ll likely get feedback about in terms of their inclusion and positioning on this year’s list:
- We put White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on the Power List. Yes, I know that will annoy an incredible amount of people, just as it did when we named one of President Trump’s first-term press secretaries, Kayleigh McEnany, to the list in 2020. I’ll make the same argument now that I did then. Leavitt holds probably the most high-profile communications role in the world and, as such, she wields significant power in constructing the narrative of Donald Trump’s second term as president. Many PR pros have strong views about the way Leavitt conducts herself and handles the role, but she is without doubt powerful and influential. That’s why she’s on the list.
- Omnicom PR Group CEO Chris Foster is No. 1 on this year’s list. How can that be when the group just posted a 9.3% year-over-year decline in revenue in Q2 2025, I hear you ask. Well, Foster already wields significant power in his role overseeing the biggest portfolio of PR firms in the industry, including FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, Porter Novelli and MMC, producing $1.68 billion in revenue in 2024. When Omnicom’s acquisition of Interpublic Group goes through in the second half of 2025, Foster’s revenue portfolio will increase to a super-powerful $3 billion, with the addition of Weber Shandwick, Golin and others. This is the biggest agency story in the PR sector for decades and how Foster constructs and deploys the largest group of firms under one roof over the next 18 months will be fascinating to see.
- Richard Edelman is No. 6 on the 2025 Power List, despite his eponymous agency no longer being the biggest in the U.S. It shed almost 8% in revenue in the U.S. and 5% globally year over year in 2024, and 9% in the U.S. and 3.7% globally in 2023, as well as making several swathes of layoffs and losing lots of senior staffers. However, Edelman is still the largest PR firm in the world with revenue just shy of $1 billion. And agency leader Richard Edelman is one of the few executives in the marketing and communications world who engages with the mainstream media and advocates for the important industry he is part of. As far as I’m aware, he is the only executive who has been named to all 19 PRWeek Power Lists. His national and international profile is bolstered by the successful Trust Barometer IP his agency has established over the past 25 years, but he also weighs in on other issues. He also receives his fair share of backlash from climate protesters such as Clean Creatives, some would say more than is deserved in relation to the dozens of other agencies and consulting firms with fossil fuel clients on their rosters that seem to be able to fly beneath the radar. His agency certainly isn’t in as good health as he would like right now, but it would be foolish to bet against Edelman turning things around and he continues to deserve his place high up on the Power List.
So, let us know your thoughts on this year’s PRWeek Power List. And let’s use it as a jumping-off point for a serious discussion about the current state of the PR business, navigating uncertainty and demonstrating value to corporations and clients.
