The Man
Brian Hart
Public relations strategist · Founder of Flackable and AuthorPrime · Author of Credibility Marketing · Host of Off The Record
Brian Hart launched Flackable at 27 and has run it his way ever since. A Philadelphia public relations strategist and Temple alum, he built a national agency, watched the ground shift under it, and rebuilt it, the chapter most founder bios skip. Then he wrote the system down and built the Flackable App to run it. What he wants is simple: better stories beating bigger budgets, and an industry that stops passing off paid as earned. Off the clock he is a civic voice this city hears from whether it asked or not. He doesn't ask clients what they want. He tells them what they need.
The story
Brian Hart didn't climb the corporate ladder. He built his own, then wrote the manual.
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and shaped by Philadelphia, Brian graduated from Temple University in 2012 with a degree in strategic communication and a minor in political science, and hit a wall: a brutal job market and PR firms that wouldn't return a call. He took a sales job at a small financial services firm outside the city and made 100 to 150 cold calls a day. It taught him how growing businesses actually talk about trust. On his own time he took over the firm's social media, wrote its blog and pitched its stories, and turned a sales gig into a PR job nobody had posted.
That portfolio landed him at a top financial PR agency in New Jersey and New York, running campaigns for national brands and building its first digital practice. It also showed him the gap: small and mid-sized firms were getting press without the tools to turn it into growth.
In 2014 a single LinkedIn message changed the game. A Los Angeles wealth management firm, with press to show and nothing to show for it, read Brian's article on third-party credibility and reached out. They didn't want publicity. They wanted impact. Within a week he quit his job, signed them, and Flackable was born. He learned to run a business on the fly, hired his first employee ten months later, then another, and built a national firm whose work runs in the country's most trusted business outlets.
Then came the test. The pandemic hit with the firm in full growth mode, and the talent wars that followed ground it down to a low point at the end of 2022, the same stretch when ChatGPT rewrote the rules of search overnight. It was not a crisis of confidence. When machines started deciding which brands to trust, the answer was the one he had been preaching for a decade: earn credibility, because everything else depreciates. He asked himself the question he asks every founder, and the answer was underdogs: students and staff failed by absent leadership, and mission-driven brands up against corporate behemoths. He rebuilt the agency around that fight, put the whole system in print in September 2026 and, a month later, built the Flackable App to run it.
Industry influence
A former Inc. columnist with bylines in Entrepreneur, Business Insider, PRWeek, PRNews and Financial Planning, Brian writes about credibility marketing and the business of trust, including the PRWeek op-ed on PR payola schemes he still calls the favorite thing he has written. He has been quoted in Forbes, CNBC, Reuters and the Philadelphia Inquirer, has appeared on CBS Philadelphia, 6abc and 1210 WPHT, and is a regular on podcasts, talk radio and livestreams, where hosts book him for a straight read on the headline of the day from a communications standpoint. The receipts are on the Press page.
The civic voice
Philadelphia hears from him whether it asked or not. As a Temple alumnus he became a vocal critic of the university's leadership in 2023, breaking the story of a secret vacation by its then-president and provost during a graduate worker strike and a campus safety crisis, which landed him on Action News and CBS Philadelphia, in the Inquirer, and on the city's talk radio. As a lifelong Sixers fan he put a digital billboard on I-76 in 2018 telling the team to move on from its general manager, after 96 percent of 1,087 fans in his Twitter poll said do it; NBC Philadelphia, CBS Philadelphia, PhillyVoice and the Inquirer all covered it.
In 2025 he signed on as media adviser to Judge Pat Dugan's campaign to unseat Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a race he came to through the Forward Party and one that drew endorsements from Republicans, Democrats, Forward and city unions. The campaign lost. The issues it ran on, starting with the DA's Conviction Integrity Unit, are now drawing scrutiny from inside Krasner's own office, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in September 2026 when it quoted Brian on what comes next.
Off the clock he is co-writing a historical epic trilogy for the screen and arguing about Philadelphia sports. He lives in the city, where all of the above is considered normal.
Book Brian
Speaking
Paid keynotes, panels, workshops and guest lectures on public relations, credibility marketing, AI search visibility and entrepreneurship. Same direct, unscripted style as the show.
Email info@flackable.comConsulting
Selectively. For PR and marketing agency leaders building a credibility marketing practice inside their own firms, and for in-house brand and communications teams installing the framework from the book. Advisory sessions to full builds.
Email info@flackable.comMedia
An on-air and print source who breaks down business news, brand controversies and communications crises from a PR standpoint, with a professional studio at home ready to go live on the fly. Journalists on deadline get a fast turnaround.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Start
Book a strategy session. It's free, it's with Brian, and there's no slideshow. You'll get a straight read on whether earned media can move your brand and what it would take, you'll hear the price before you ask for it, and nobody will ask what your budget is. If the answer is no, you'll hear that too.
Talk to Brian