David Bullock and the art of getting people to show up

The university administrators had heard about the party. David Bullock and two friends, still in their first year at Howard, were called in to discuss Project HU. Bullock remembers being told that the school had not seen anything of its scale since Sean Combs was a student. Most freshmen would count getting through registration as a respectable opening act. Bullock had attracted an institutional audience before the evening had even begun.

It is a useful place to begin his story, because a party makes the business of attention wonderfully plain. People either come or they find something else to do. A clever announcement has to survive contact with an actual Friday night. Years before Bullock was presenting a marketing strategy to a corporate client, he was learning how an invitation moves through a community.

Today, he is the founder and CEO of 907 Agency, based in Los Angeles, with work crossing music, sport, gaming and creator partnerships. He also publishes as Alaska. The agency name and the nickname point back to the same place: Anchorage. His career has taken him through very different rooms, but those few digits have proved easy to pack.

The party before the pitch

Bullock was born in Anchorage in 1993, the youngest of seven children. He played basketball at South Anchorage High School and followed his older brother Wesley to Howard University in Washington, D.C. There is a family thread running through the move. There is also a change of setting large enough to make a young person pay attention to the people around him.

Howard supplied an audience and an opportunity to discover what he could do with one. Bullock built a social media presence, promoted events and developed independent marketing work. His experience included work with Warner Music Group, Atlantic Records, Revolt TV and Allied Integrated Marketing. The emerging career had several entrances: the campus, the internet, an internship, a client who needed help reaching people.

Music widened the circle. In 2015, he worked with The World Famous Tony Williams on a showcase at South by Southwest. In 2016, he worked on Kanye West’s Saint Pablo Tour. A university event and a touring production operate at different scales, but both give an organizer an immediate education in the gap between a plan and a room full of people.

Bullock left Howard before his final year to pursue entertainment. The choice interrupted the conventional university sequence. It also put a name to the work he was already doing: building a professional life around audiences and relationships. A diploma would have provided a tidier ending to the college chapter. His story continued with a company.

Three digits, carried south

He founded 907 Agency in 2017 and named it after his hometown’s area code. For a business working in entertainment, the choice has an appealing lack of geographical obedience. Los Angeles is where he is based. Alaska is what he called the enterprise. The business card keeps both places in the conversation.

The client history has included Nike, Spotify and Warner Music Group, alongside artists and creators such as Chief Keef and LaLa Milan. Those clients need different things from attention. A listener, a customer and a follower may be the same person at different points in the day. Bullock’s agency works across the settings in which those interests meet.

Forbes named him to its 2021 Marketing & Advertising 30 Under 30 class. Its account of the business highlighted digital and experiential marketing, as well as his commitment to speaking with students and giving back. The recognition attached a public milestone to a company that had begun four years earlier. The three digits now sat beside a national professional credential.

“Nobody expects anything from the underdog.”

David Bullock

That description of himself helps explain the tone of his career. He talks about being an underdog without treating the position as an embarrassment. It gives him room to attempt things. His public work repeatedly crosses boundaries that a more orderly résumé might keep apart: a music relationship becomes a marketing opportunity; an agency founder becomes a creator; a hometown connection becomes a board appointment.

An invitation to the ice

In 2022, Bullock announced that 907 Agency had added the Los Angeles Kings for the 2021-2022 NHL season. He described the assignment in direct terms: helping the franchise reach new audiences and expand its fan base. A professional team has plenty of people who already know where to find it. The interesting task is reaching the people who have yet to decide that hockey belongs in their lives.

“We’re making sure to expose hockey and the team to new audiences,” he said. The agency’s account of its work describes lifestyle and fashion publicity alongside creator experiences. Those are plausible doors into a sport for someone whose existing interests run through entertainment or personal style. A person does not have to begin with a working knowledge of the power play to enjoy an evening at the arena.

The portfolio also includes an Xbox and Lakers anniversary installation. Here the work becomes physical: design, engineering, permits, fabrication and staffing. The photograph shows oversized consoles decorated with Lakers imagery. They have escaped the television cabinet rather decisively. Behind the joke in their size sits a practical production job, with drawings and permissions required before anyone can take a picture.

Seen together, these assignments give the founder’s work some texture. There are people to invite and things to build. The social post is one visible part of a longer chain of decisions. Bullock’s early experience getting a crowd together remains a useful lens for understanding the business.

The marketer steps into the frame

Bullock also has an audience of his own. On Snapchat, Alaska publishes about travel, fashion, watches, financial literacy and his agency. The range allows an ordinary change of subject that a corporate account might struggle to justify. A watch can sit beside a business observation. A trip can lead to a different kind of conversation.

In July 2024, Snap named him to its 523 creator class. Fifteen creators were selected for a twelve-month program offering funding, resources and individual mentorship. The cohort included LaLa Milan, Cindy Chen and Shannon Baker. Ensemble, the branded entertainment company co-founded by Issa Rae, partnered with the program to connect creators and brands.

The role has an interesting symmetry. An agency negotiates the relationship between a brand and the people who can reach an audience. A creator experiences that relationship personally, while making decisions about what to publish next. Bullock occupies both positions. The responsibilities overlap without becoming identical.

In March 2026, Alaska appeared among the nominees for Top Lifestyle Creator and One To Watch at Snapchat’s inaugural Snappys. After the ceremony, Bullock said he had won neither award and thanked the people who had helped develop his creator career. There is something pleasingly unceremonious about the admission. Two nominations were worth marking, even without an object to carry home.

Alaska still has his number

Home has remained part of the work in a more concrete sense. On June 10, 2024, Covenant House Alaska announced Bullock’s appointment to its board of directors. The organization supports young people facing homelessness and instability. Its announcement arrived while it was working to close an $80,000 funding gap before the end of that fiscal year.

That timing gives the appointment a practical setting. A nonprofit board position involves an institution with bills, responsibilities and young people depending on it. The announcement connected Bullock’s entrepreneurial experience and commitment to youth with the organization’s work. The hometown relationship had acquired a formal responsibility.

Youth mentorship also appears in his work with United Mission, which lists him as a partner alongside technologist Jay Hammonds. His speaking experience has included high school students in Alaska and audiences at Harvard. The scale of the room changes. The willingness to address students has remained a recurring part of his public career.

The next room has a basketball court

Bullock’s personal website describes another role: CMO of THE LEAGUE, a basketball property with celebrity participation. His account emphasizes the business machinery around its existing community: a website, data capture and a framework for monetization. It is a revealing set of priorities for someone whose career began with people turning up to an event. An audience also needs somewhere to go afterward.

Film adds another chapter. Bullock holds an associate producer credit on In Whose Name?, the 2025 documentary directed by Nico Ballesteros about Ye. The credit extends an entertainment career that had already included touring and marketing. It places him within the work of bringing a film to an audience.

His stated ambition is to help culture-driven businesses develop commercial value while retaining their authenticity. The vocabulary has become more corporate since Project HU. The human problem remains recognizable. There are people with something to offer, people who might care, and some work required to bring them together. Bullock has built a career around the invitation. He still signs it Alaska.