Pierpont Communications: Agency Profile
In 1987, Houston, Texas, wasn’t the diverse, artsy, foodie paradise that it’s evolved into today. The U.S.’s fourth most populous city has matured and grown a lot in 33 years. That same year is also when Philip Morabito left a successful PR career in New York City and launched Pierpont Communications. If any marketing/PR and public affairs firm can lead clients through rapidly developing changes, its Pierpont.
Specialties
Pierpont’s services are far-reaching and include media relations, reputation management, corporate communications, crisis management, and digital marketing, to name a few. As Texas’ largest independent agency in Texas, its offices in Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio serve regional, national and global clients in the healthcare, energy, technology, consumer, commercial, industrial, professional, financial, education, and nonprofit industries. Pierpont has an additional location in New Jersey to serve clients in the northeast.
Clients
Some of Pierpont’s clients are well known. A few include Walmart, Uber, Capital One, Verizon, Sabre, Sara Lee, Imperial Sugar, Encore Live, BP, Halliburton, Shell, Sempra Energy, Battelle, NASA, and Aramark.
Culture
Pierpont aims high, not just delivering excellent service to its clients but also in empowering its team members. The later focus has resulted in the agency being nominated nine times as “Best Place to Work” by the Houston Business Journal. The firm also encourages employees to get engaged in professional as well as community activities and even schedules days out of the office for team building activities.
Accolades
PR newsletter O’Dwyer’s continues to list Pierpont in several categories in its ranking of top national PR firms. O’Dwyer’s, which has been doing this for 50 years, ranked Pierpont 58th in the U.S. of all agencies considered and third in Texas. In terms of categories, it awarded a national ranking to Pierpont of fourth in nonprofits, fifth in energy, eighth in home furnishings, eighth also in industrials, 21st in professional services, 28th in financial PR and investor relations, 40th in technology, and 48th in healthcare.
Pierpont was also a finalist for the MidSize Agency of the Year in PRWeek’s 2002 and 2013 competition. Inc. 500 listed Pierpont in 2001 and Inc. 5000 did the same in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Houston Business Journal listed Pierpont as a Houston 100 company five times and named Morabito “Most Admired CEO” in 2018.
Leading by Example
In encouraging staff to be involved in their communities, Morabito himself leads by example. In addition to leading his teams, he also teaches a class on integrated marketing communications to second-year MBA and graduate students at the University of Houston’s Bauer School of Business. He recently started an advisory board at the University’s Valenti School of Communication and serves on the board for the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. And as a further commitment to our future generation or PR/marketing leaders, Pierpont offers course credit internships at four of its five locations.
Not unnoticed is Morabito’s spirit of free enterprise. The Greater Houston Partnership Roundtable recognized this in 1999 by selecting him Entrepreneur of the Year for small businesses. Seven years later, Ernst & Young named Morabito Entrepreneur of the Year in the services category in 2006. Out in the community, Morabito also assists several area nonprofits, including the Pope John Paul II Catholic School, as well as being a member of numerous professional organizations.
