Nadim Sadek

After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, with a degree in Pure Psychology, Sadek embarked on a career in market research beginning in 1985 at Lansdowne Market Research in Dublin, before he moved to London. Sadek became a Director of Burns Research Partners, renamed Burns Sadek Research two years later, a boutique qualitative research firm. After 7 years there, he founded Sadek Wynberg Research in Kensington in 1993. SWR conducted research for the development of brands and communications for many of the world's blue-chip companies, including Unilever, Bacardi Global Brands, Kimberly-Clark, Vodafone and Sony Ericsson. The firm grew to be the largest of its kind in the UK by 2000 and the world by 2003, whereupon it was sold to WPP, becoming Sadek Wynberg Millward Brown [2]

Sadek became Global Leader of Millward Brown's Qualitative Network for the next three years before taking up the role of Worldwide Commercial & Strategy Director at Research International, a company operating in 52 countries.[3] This concluded his market research career.

Talking of ‘practising what I preach’ he then 'became a client' and created the Inish Turk Beg brand, based on the values of the eponymous island, Inish Turk Beg, off the coast of Ireland which he had purchased in 2003.[4] He built businesses in whiskey, music, food, hospitality and a Connemara Pony stud, winning a global Mobius prize as 'best new brand'

Sadek then founded and served as CEO at ProQuo AI, headquartered in London, with offices in Philadelphia, New York and Johannesburg. It brought together breakthrough learning in neuroscience from its human sciences team, application of new technology through its machine sciences team, and the use of a software-as-a-service business model, creating subscription services to manage brands, for £1000 per month.[5][6][7] The business formerly known as TransgressiveX specialised in developing business value through brands, particularly employing a contemporary iteration of Social Exchange Theory. It was appointed globally on Unilever's business in 2015.[8] Further successes with clients such as KCF [9] and the launch of an innovative quantitative research framework for brands [10] resulted in TransgressiveX being nominated as one of 2016's top disruptive marketing brands.[11] This relaunched in June 2019 as ProQuo AI an enterprise software business offering marketing action plans built by AI. After building its recurring revenues to several million dollars, it was sold to private equity.

In 2022, he founded Shimmr AI[12] that he leads as CEO. As an AI-native business, using specialised large language models and diffusion models, plus a media deployment engine, it's a multi-domain technology to disrupt the advertising industry. It enables long-tail products, previously uneconomical to advertise, to be publicised. Its initial focus is upon Book Publishing.

In 2023, Forbes Books globally published his book in English, 'Shimmer, don't Shake - how Publishing can embrace AI', which is also published in all other languages by Mensch Publishing.

Mr Sadek's increasing breadth of activity led to him featuring on the launch series of The Secret Millionaire in Ireland, screened by RTÉ (October 2011),[13] and Channel 4, followed up by a ‘Look-back’ episode screened by RTÉ (October 2012), [14][15] which saw him return to the groups he had benefacted, Cork Institute of Technology's Cork Academy of Music (socially-inclusive music education),[16][17] Cois Tine (welcome and pastoral care for refugees and asylum seekers),[18] Rebel Wheelers (competitive sports for disabled children),[19] and Cork Penny Dinners (nourishment without judgment). In 2020, Forbes focused on how ProQuo AI was transforming marketing, especially for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, through the introduction of Artificial Intelligence, led by Sadek.[20] In June 2023, GallantCEO published a profile of him as a CEO.[21]

Mr Sadek also writes occasional features, such as on the topic of Brexit, general elections and brand management.[22]