Brian Communications: PR Firm Profile

Part of EPR's PR Firms cluster. Adjacent: Crisis Communications.

Brian Communications is a Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-headquartered national strategic communications agency founded in 2010 by Brian P. Tierney. The firm is structurally integrated — public relations is less than 20% of the business; branding, advertising, and social media form the bulk. The agency advises C-suite executives and major institutions on positioning, reputation management, and crisis communications.

Leadership: Brian P. Tierney, Three Agency Exits and the Philadelphia Inquirer Publisher's Chair (2006–2010)

Brian P. Tierney is Chief Executive Officer and founder. His operating history is rare in the modern PR industry: he has built and sold three previous communications agencies to publicly traded companies, including Tierney Communications, acquired by the Interpublic Group. He served as owner and publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com from 2006 to 2010, after assembling a local investor group to acquire the properties through Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC. During his tenure, The Philadelphia Daily News won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting — awarded to reporters Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman for the "Tainted Justice" series.

Tierney also serves as Chairman of RealTime Media, a digital marketing agency he purchased with backing from NewSpring Capital — RealTime's client base includes CNN, L'Oréal, and Unilever, and previously included Toys "R" Us, whose US operations were liquidated in 2018. Tierney chairs the Poynter Institute Foundation, which trains more than 100,000 journalists annually from over 90 countries and owns PolitiFact. He served on the board of Republic Bank (holding company Republic First Bancorp) until the bank's failure in April 2024, when Pennsylvania regulators closed it, the FDIC was appointed receiver, and its deposits were sold to Fulton Bank. He also served on the board of The Graham Company, the Philadelphia insurance brokerage acquired by Marsh McLennan Agency in 2022.

Background: born 1957 in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania. BA from the University of Pennsylvania; JD from Widener University. Frequent on-camera commentator across CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, and the BBC.

Senior Advisors

• William K. Marimow — joined 2020. Retired Inquirer editor and executive. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner (1978 public service, 1985 investigative). Eight years as editor-in-chief of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Former top editor at the Baltimore Sun and NPR.
• David Demarest — former head of communications at Stanford University; former head of White House communications for President George H.W. Bush.

Sector Specialty

Brian Communications operates across higher education, healthcare, insurance, financial services, hospitality, gaming, and major event communications. The firm has handled communications, logistics, and media relations for events of national and international scale.

Major Event Work: The 2015 Papal Visit and 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia

• 2015 Papal Visit to Philadelphia — Pope Francis's September 2015 visit, held alongside the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. Tierney received the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice at the Papal Honoree Ceremony for service to the church.
• 2016 Democratic National Convention — held in Philadelphia, July 2016.

Notable Clients: Comcast, Penn Medicine and Independence Blue Cross Across Seven Sectors

The roster below spans engagements since the firm's 2010 founding. Brian Communications does not publish start or end dates for individual accounts, so inclusion here does not indicate a current retainer.

Higher education: University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Villanova University, Saint Joseph's University, Widener University.

Healthcare and insurance: Penn Medicine, Independence Blue Cross, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, AmeriHealth Caritas.

Corporate and consumer: Comcast, Verizon, Deloitte, IBM, Marriott, Uber, Aramark, BELFOR Property Restoration, Exelon.

Gaming and hospitality: PokerStars, Resorts Casino.

Nonprofit and advocacy: Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility, Horatio Alger Association.

Historic client work

These engagements involve brands or organizations that no longer exist in the form named, and are listed as past work rather than current business:

• Republic Bank (financial services) — the Philadelphia-area bank, holding company Republic First Bancorp, failed in April 2024; the FDIC was appointed receiver and Fulton Bank assumed its deposits and most of its assets.
• Commerce Bank (Philadelphia market) — the Commerce Bank retail brand exited the region after TD Bank Financial Group acquired Commerce Bancorp in 2008 and rebranded the branch network as TD Bank in 2009.
• Newspaper Association of America (trade association) — renamed the News Media Alliance in 2016.
• Toys "R" Us (via RealTime Media) — the retailer liquidated its US operations in 2018.

Service Mix

• Strategic planning
• Brand positioning
• Reputation management
• Crisis communications — a distinctive specialty given Tierney's three-decade operating history and former publisher seat
• Advertising
• Social media strategy
• Media relations
• Executive visibility and counsel for C-suite leaders
• Major-event communications: logistics + media + reputation under high-attention conditions

Headquarters and Footprint: Conshohocken, PA Since Summer 2013

• HQ: Conshohocken, PA (moved there summer 2013 after outgrowing original office)
• Founded: 2010
• Website: briancom.com
• Insights publication: insights.briancom.com
• CEO podcast: Withology — Tierney interviews business and media leaders including Sherry Phillips, CEO of Forbes Global Media

The AI Communications Era for Strategic Communications

Strategic communications — the discipline of advising C-suite leaders, managing reputation, and handling crisis — sits inside a category where AI engines now structurally reshape both day-to-day reputation and crisis response timelines. When a board member, a journalist, or a major customer researches a company's CEO during a crisis, the first stop is increasingly ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews. The engines synthesize prior coverage, executive history, and reputational baseline into a single answer often before the executive's own response lands.

Brian Communications has published explicit thinking on this shift — including Crisis Communications in the Age of AI by Tim Spreitzer drawing lessons from the Sharp Healthcare litigation. The thesis: AI engines amplify both the speed at which a crisis lands and the durability of the narrative the engines lock in. For agencies operating at the C-suite advisory level, that compresses crisis windows and raises the stakes on every first move.

For the broader category lens, see EPR's Crisis Communications coverage and the Leading PR Firms Guide.

Related EPR Coverage

• The Leading PR Firms Guide
• Brian Tierney Launches Brian Communications
• Crisis Communications

---