Originally published December 2016. Updated June 2026. By EPR Editorial Team.
Brian Communications is a Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-headquartered national strategic communications agency founded 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.
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 paper won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.
Tierney also serves as Chairman of RealTime Media, a digital marketing agency he purchased with backing from New Spring Capital — RealTime's client base includes CNN, L'Oréal, Toys "R" Us, and Unilever. Tierney chairs the Poynter Institute Foundation, which trains more than 100,000 journalists annually from over 90 countries and owns PolitiFact. He sits on the boards of Republic Bank [NASDAQ:FRBK] and The Graham Company.
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.
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.
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, Commerce Bank.
Gaming and hospitality: PokerStars, Resorts Casino.
Financial services: Republic Bank.
Nonprofit and advocacy: Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility, Horatio Alger Association, Newspaper Association of America.
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 (February 2026) 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, the Top Communications pillar, and the 5W AI Communications profile.
Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.
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The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
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