About R.Bruer – a Strategic Communications Firm
based in Portland, Oregon
R.Bruer Company is a strategic communications firm in Portland, Ore. We craft brands, messages and stories for businesses, nonprofits and institutions across sustainability, cleantech, healthcare and other environmental and social sectors.
We think of our clients as the good guys — organizations whose measures of success are financial, environmental and social. Whether you’re offering solutions for reducing fossil fuel use, advancing sustainable business practices or keeping individuals and communities healthy, we make it our mission to help you succeed.
Experience
The guy behind the curtain at R.Bruer Company is Rich Bruer. R.Bruer is a melding of Rich’s experience across three decades as a business developer, communications strategist and storyteller.
Business developer
Rich Bruer
Rich knows intimately what’s involved in starting, operating and growing a business. R.Bruer is Rich’s second business. He previously co-founded McClenahan Bruer Communications in Portland, Ore. Along with Kerry McClenahan, he grew the firm into one of the West Coast’s leading high-tech PR and advertising agencies.
Creating and executing business plans, hiring employees, building a culture, attracting and keeping customers, achieving financial targets, providing a steady hand through boom times and hard times — Rich’s real-world experience as an entrepreneur, owner and manager deepen and sharpen his perspective as a trusted advisor and strategist.
Rich sold his stake in McClenahan Bruer in August 2006 to support progressive, innovative businesses and organizations. The result is R.Bruer Company, formed in 2007.
Communications strategist
Rich has counseled dozens of executives in venture-backed startups, mid-sized private businesses, large publicly traded firms and mission-driven nonprofits. He brings a mind for the big picture and a long track record of producing concrete results.
Rich draws on an uncommon breadth of experience and expertise across multiple communications disciplines, including branding, PR, advertising, direct marketing, social media and more. Because he doesn’t see the world through the eyes of a narrow specialist, he recommends and executes strategies that best align with your objectives, timeline and budget.
Storyteller
Rich’s early training as a newspaper journalist and years of experience advising clients enables him to get quickly to the heart of your story.
Always he begins with deep listening — whether interviews, surveys, market research, brainstorming sessions — for the themes, facts and emotions that make your organization distinct and compelling.
He transforms what he’s heard and learned into differentiated brands, positions and messages tailored to your target audience. They become the material for the stories he skillfully crafts and delivers across today’s diverse landscape of news, social, Web, digital and print media.
Other experience
Rich is a current member and recent past chair of the Northwest Earth Institute board of directors and past board member and chair of the Sustainable Business Network of Portland. He started his technology career as a corporate communications manager for Mentor Graphics. He holds an MS in journalism from the University of Oregon.
