The story below is from our November/December 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
The marketing professional credits his success to the relationships he’s made.
Brett Winter Lemon Photography, Inc.
Bruce C. Bryan is a self-described “Advertising Czar.” He’s also a nonprofit ally, family man, marketing mentor, ace networker and, now, author.
When employees join the Roanoke marketing firm 5Points Creative, they choose their own job titles. Wordplay rules the day, with labels like “The Poet,” “Pixel Pusher” and “Social Butterfly-in-Chief” listed on the company’s website.
“Advertising Czar” is the descriptor under the purple-tinted picture of Bruce C. Bryan, who founded 5Points in 2009 as a solopreneur working from his dining room table.
It could say so much more: Nonprofit Ally. Family Man. Marketing Mentor. Ace Networker. And, recently, Author.
After more than 15 years of building 5Points Creative into a company of 18 employees (including two of his children), with accounts from near (Ridge View Bank) and far (the Idaho Fire Chiefs Association), and after starting, leading and supporting several area nonprofits (The Spot on Kirk, Help Save the Next Girl and Healing Strides of Virginia, among them), Bryan launched his second book in September. “Turning Tables: Everything I Needed to Know About Business I Learned as a Server” highlights the lessons he and other leaders in Roanoke and beyond learned during their time working in the restaurant industry.
“I wanted to share because I thought it would help a mix of people,” Bryan says, sitting behind a wide polished desk in the corner office of the renovated house that his firm moved into in 2020. Servers, he says, might not realize the many soft skills they’ve learned in the hospitality industry. And managers — across industries — might benefit from considering talent with restaurant experience. “If you’re a hiring manager and these days it’s hard to find ‘good people’ well, you may not be looking in the right places.”
In 2021, Bryan published “40 West: Two Brothers on the Trip to Mark a Lifetime,” the story of a road trip he and his older brother took from Virginia to Arizona in January 2020. They retraced the route their father, Hugh McLellan Bryan, traveled twice a year, for 30 years, in retirement. It was a way to reconnect with each other, remember their Dad and journey to his Phoenix memorial service.
Bryan, 60, grew up in Pennsylvania and Delaware. He started college in Ohio and finished at James Madison University. He has been a writer his whole life — penning sports stories in high school and publishing a column in his college newspaper. But in his 20s, he stepped into the sales side of television and discovered he was good at it. For the next 22 years, he worked at six TV stations and a radio station, from Virginia to Michigan to Ohio and back. He earned top sales awards — and helped raise his three kids.
Then, in 2009, just a year and a half after moving to Roanoke, the recession that was squeezing everything caught up with Bryan.
The day he was let go, Bryan attended a previously scheduled meeting with a group of 30-some Roanoke professionals gathering at what was then the Kirk Avenue Music Hall.
“They’re going around the room … and what you’re supposed to do is say your name and where you work. So they got to me and I said: ‘My name is Bruce Bryan and until about 30 minutes ago, I worked at WSLS.’ I just figured this was probably the best place for me to meet other people that might help me find whatever’s coming next.”
The support in that room helped convince Bryan to open his business, originally called B2C Enterprises. Much of what came after — the clients, the growth, the nonprofit support — stemmed from the relationships he made that day.
“What people are usually struck by with Bruce is his sincerity and his ability to connect people,” says Laurel Bryan, a retired manager with ADP. The couple married in 2019, a second marriage for both of them. “I think one of the best ways to describe him is: He’s a connector.”
Bryan says more growth for 5Point Creative is likely on the horizon. The firm’s most recent clients are located in Cheyenne, Denver, Nashville. “We’re still doing a ton of stuff in Roanoke,” he says. But what lands accounts these days? “It’s word of mouth and it’s relationships.”
Or, as Bryan writes in “Turning Tables,” “Start with a warm smile, and end with a thank you.”
The story above is from our November/December 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!