In January 2016, Freud Communications — the London-based PR firm founded by Matthew Freud in 1985 — acquired Brew Media Relations, the New York technology PR boutique founded by Brooke Hammerling. The transaction was reported at the time as Matthew Freud's first significant U.S. footprint and as Hammerling's exit from sole ownership of a firm she had built into one of the most-cited Silicon Valley–to–East Coast tech PR shops of the 2000s and 2010s.
Both names sit inside larger arcs that are worth tracing. Matthew Freud, Freud Communications, and the structural position the firm occupies in British PR are one story. Brooke Hammerling, Brew, and her subsequent chapters are another.
Matthew Freud and Freud Communications
Matthew Freud is the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, the son of Sir Clement Freud (British MP, broadcaster, and food writer), and one of the most personally and politically connected figures in modern British communications. Freud Communications was founded in 1985 and has been a fixture of the London PR establishment since the late 1990s, when it expanded from an entertainment-and-celebrity focus into corporate, political, and consumer work.
The firm's most public period coincided with Matthew Freud's 2001–2014 marriage to Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert Murdoch — a relationship that placed Freud Communications in the center of the most heavily covered media-political nexus in Britain through the New Labour era. Freud's connections to Tony Blair's circle, to the Murdoch press, and to the upper-tier London social calendar were the soft infrastructure inside which the firm built its client base.
The firm's client roster has, at various points, included PepsiCo, KFC, Asda, Channel 4, Sky, Nike, and a long list of consumer, retail, and broadcast accounts. Freud Communications is consistently ranked among the largest PR firms in the United Kingdom.
Brooke Hammerling and Brew Media Relations
Brooke Hammerling founded Brew Media Relations in 2002, in the second wave of New York technology PR — after the 1990s dot-com generation, before the social-media-PR generation that emerged later in the decade. Brew built a reputation for early-stage and growth-stage technology clients, including engagements that anchored the firm's profile through the 2000s and 2010s.
Hammerling herself became one of the most-cited operators in U.S. technology PR — a public figure inside her own industry in a way that PR firm principals rarely are. The 2016 acquisition by Freud Communications was structured to keep her running the U.S. operation while plugging Brew into a larger transatlantic platform.
What the Acquisition Said About the Category
The 2016 Freud-Brew transaction was a small deal in dollar terms and a meaningful one in structural terms. Three things it signaled:
The London-to-New-York technology PR axis was consolidating. The pattern of large London firms acquiring well-regarded U.S. boutiques — for transatlantic client coverage, for senior staff, for a credible East Coast story — was accelerating. Freud-Brew was one of the earlier signals.
Founder-led tech PR shops were getting harder to scale as independents. Brew had built durable senior relationships in technology media, but the scale needed to compete on global accounts had moved beyond what a New York–only operation could easily deliver. Acquisition by a larger platform became the standard exit for firms in Brew's position.
The PR-firm-as-personality model was peaking. Hammerling, like a small number of other named publicists across both technology and consumer categories, ran a firm that was inseparable from her personal brand. That model has since fragmented — clients now buy capabilities and team structures more than they buy a single principal's relationships, and the named-publicist firm has, in most categories, become a less common acquisition target than the bench-strength shop.
For more on PR firm leadership and structural shifts inside the agency category, see Everything-PR's coverage of PR Firms & Communications Agencies.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
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.
