Michael J. Brunner and the business of saying hello

The first meeting was with Michael. A new employee joining Brunner could expect an introduction to the person whose surname appeared on the agency. Its stated purpose was wonderfully plain: “Let’s get to know each other on a first-name basis.” In a business paid to make an impression, the founder had made room for an ordinary hello.

There is something revealing about putting that conversation on the calendar. Familiarity was given a place in the working day. The person arriving had a name, and so did the person in charge. A small ritual made the hierarchy a little less mysterious before the work began.

Michael J. Brunner helped build a Pittsburgh advertising business that combined creative work with digital services, analytics and a sustained interest in what clients would need next. There were acquisitions, national clients and a Super Bowl campaign. Yet the opening conversation offers a useful way into his story. Here was an executive who wanted to grow an organization while keeping its people within conversational distance.

One set of numbers, many kinds of work

The modern agency launched as Blattner Brunner in 1989. Brunner’s approach brought advertising, digital, direct marketing, public relations and other disciplines into a business with one profit center. That accounting choice deserves a moment. An agency can promise collaboration in a pitch; its internal arrangements determine how comfortable collaboration will be on Monday morning.

Putting different specialties into a shared financial structure gives the promise some substance. It makes the organization itself part of the creative problem. Who gets rewarded? Which work gets recommended? Can a client move between capabilities without becoming the subject of an internal negotiation? These are less photogenic questions than the ones asked about a commercial. They also help determine what gets made.

His professional preparation crossed several kinds of classroom. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Bowling Green State University and a master’s at the University of Pittsburgh, and studied advertising at Pittsburgh’s Ivy School of Professional Art. The eventual business likewise resisted a narrow definition of agency work. Creative reputation mattered, but so did the practical machinery behind a client’s results.

The figures were shared, even on awkward months

By 2020, Brunner’s management habits included sharing the company’s numbers with employees every month, including months when the results disappointed him. The first-name meeting and the financial update belong together. One introduces people to the founder; the other introduces them to the condition of the business.

For a creative company, that combination is especially interesting. A disappointing number can interrupt a very attractive presentation. Making it available invites a conversation about the distance between effort and outcome. It also asks employees to inhabit the same reality as management, rather than wait for a cheerful interpretation to arrive.

Brunner had put the underlying argument into words years earlier. Asked in 2012 about changing company culture, he began with the difficulty: organizations contain intertwined beliefs, values and behavior. His advice was practical. Decide what the company should become, articulate its purpose, start with small successes, reward employees and give them training and support. Then allow time.

“Walk the walk,” he said. “And most importantly, be patient.” Those are modest instructions for a profession fond of urgent launches. They leave the leader with a recurring obligation: behave tomorrow in a way that makes today’s statement believable. A slogan has a much easier job.

“Walk the walk.”

Michael Brunner, on changing company culture

The digital bet before the brochure wore out

The agency invested heavily in digital during the mid-1990s, when many websites still resembled brochures transferred to a screen. It bought an interactive firm it had worked with and developed the capability into an Innovation Lab. Among the technology products that followed was a trading platform for major financial institutions.

That is an unusually concrete answer to the question of what an advertising agency might become. A trading platform requires a different conversation from a television script. It takes the agency further into how a client’s business operates, and it broadens the kinds of people who can do useful work inside the organization.

Brunner’s appetite for new capabilities also appears in the way his industry described him: a founder looking for services to buy, build or obtain through partnerships. The recurring interest was in anticipating the next client need. The creative business had to keep acquiring useful skills.

The commercial arrangement evolved too. The agency developed an incentive system using measures from its Innovation Lab, with performance bonuses tied to business results. That approach made measurement part of the relationship with a client. It gave the agency a financial reason to care about what happened after the work had left the building.

Winning, without the participation trophy

The friendly introduction should not be mistaken for a lack of competitive appetite. In a 2011 essay, Brunner described a conversation with a friend about a children’s soccer tournament where everyone received a trophy. He worried about the expectations people might carry from that experience into a workplace where teams competed for business.

His emphasis was on the team. A candidate’s sense of personal entitlement troubled him because an agency needed people who could contribute to a collaborative culture. The argument had the unmistakable impatience of an employer reading a stack of applications. Being eager to join and believing one is owed an opportunity are different starting points for a conversation.

There was room for failure in his thinking. Asked about it the following year, he recommended accepting it, learning from it and continuing. He called failure “the price of admission for success.” The sporting metaphor and the tolerance for setbacks sit comfortably together: competition gives the work stakes, while persistence keeps a setback from deciding the whole career.

Read alongside his cultural advice, the picture becomes more specific. Employees were to receive support and training. They were also expected to help the group win. Warmth and demanding standards occupied the same office.

A very public test of the machinery

In 2017, the agency’s work for 84 Lumber put its integration of storytelling and digital response in front of a national audience. “The Journey” followed a mother and daughter traveling north. The Super Bowl broadcast spot directed viewers online to see the conclusion, bringing television, a longer film and a digital destination into one campaign.

The campaign became politically charged, and the online audience arrived with more enthusiasm than the site could initially accommodate. More than 300,000 requests came in during the first minute, against capacity for about 150,000. The agency said it took roughly ten minutes to resolve the problem. A very expensive invitation had attracted a queue at the door.

Brunner’s public response defended the value of a sincere message even when the subject carried risk. His agency’s work continued beyond the game through recruitment advertising and other channels. The campaign eventually produced more than 92,000 applications and over 135,000 opt-ins to the company’s talent network.

Those totals belong to the agency and its client, with many people involved in producing the work. In Brunner’s career, the episode offers a vivid demonstration of the operating model: creative ambition, distribution and measurement had to function together. The audience would experience the whole thing, including the part that needed fixing.

Even the elf hat had a job

That same year, the agency offered a less solemn example of its taste. Its holiday film imagined creatives trying to assemble a sincere greeting from practically every seasonal advertising ingredient available: presents, animals, romance, dancing Santas and virtual reality. Lumber made the list too. Evidently the calendar had not exhausted that particular material.

The film ended over a staff photograph with Michael Brunner in an elf hat. An executive can appear in a company photograph in several capacities. Agreeing to be the elf is a fairly economical way to communicate that the joke includes the person in charge.

His involvement in Pittsburgh extended beyond the agency. Over his career he served on the national board of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and as president of Pittsburgh’s advertising club. His earlier biography also records board service with Civic Light Opera, Point Park University and the Rivers Club. These were connections to professional and civic organizations in the city where he worked.

There is a pleasing range here: the boardroom, the advertising club, the holiday production. Taken together, these public details suggest someone comfortable participating in an organization’s life at more than one level. The founder could be responsible for the business and still turn up wearing the hat.

Leaving people with the company

In December 2021, after 41 years, Brunner retired and the agency’s leaders bought the business. That handover gives the earlier management details a different weight. People who had worked within the organization were now taking responsibility for its ownership. The company bearing his name had acquired a future under its existing leadership.

Recognition followed the operating career. He was honored in the Pittsburgh Business Times’ 2021 Outstanding CEOs coverage and inducted into the AAF Pittsburgh Hall of Fame in 2022. The latter placed him within the history of the local profession he had helped serve.

In November 2025, AAF Pittsburgh listed him on a panel about the career life cycle, alongside speakers including University of Pittsburgh professor Carrie Leana and communications executive Emily Price. Brian Bronaugh was listed as moderator. The subject suited a retired founder: what happens to professional life as it changes shape?

It is tempting to measure an agency founder through the largest account or the loudest commercial. Brunner’s record offers those kinds of episodes, but the quieter details have their own staying power. A conversation with someone starting work. A monthly look at the numbers. A business continuing under the people who knew it. For an advertising executive, that is a satisfying final arrangement: the name remains on the company, and other people get to write what happens next.