A beauty product can sit on a shelf for months without acquiring much of a social life. Put it in a Malibu beach house, surround it with people who know how to tell a beauty story, and it has somewhere to go. In 2021, Innovative PR helped bring Shiseido’s Beach House back with private dinners, outdoor activities, creator encounters and a COVID concierge. The setting did some of the explaining. Sun products at the beach required very little introduction.
That choice offers a useful way into Innovative PR, Jennifer Betts’s beauty and lifestyle communications agency. Its portfolio is full of places: a beach house, a luxury hotel, a film screening, a launch party. Each gives an editor, creator or professional something to experience before being asked to tell other people about it. The invitation is part of the pitch.
A beach house with a job to do
Innovative PR says it developed the Shiseido activation with the brand’s communications team in 2018. Its four-year account of the relationship includes 30 product launches and four annual Sun Week events. Recurrence matters here. A returning event gives the agency another occasion to introduce products and refresh relationships without inventing an entirely unfamiliar format.
The agency reports 3.7 billion media impressions for the 2021 activation. Treat that as a measure of reported publicity exposure. It does not establish how many different people paid attention or bought sunscreen. The more useful detail for someone planning a launch is the schedule: several activities gave different guests different reasons to participate.
Four annual Sun Week events. A recurring setting, with fresh reasons to return. Figures reported by Innovative PR.
The publicist who started in family medicine
Betts’s route into that work was unusually indirect. In a Mediabistro interview, she described becoming a nurse practitioner in family medicine before taking an internship at an events PR company in 2001. She already enjoyed hosting parties. The internship gave that inclination a professional direction.
Her Fashion Mamas profile supplies a useful distinction: Live Loyal PR began in 2009; another agency partnership followed in 2012; Innovative PR and Media began in 2016. Longstanding relationships in the current portfolio therefore reach back further than the present company’s name. A founder brings a history to a new business, including people who already answer her calls.
“Time management, hard work and loyalty.”Jennifer Betts on the skills behind her work, Mediabistro
Those were the skills Betts singled out when asked about success. Her account of a working day involved research, concepts, pitching and multiple client calls. The glamorous photograph comes near the end of a much less photogenic sequence of decisions.
Then the room became a mailbox
Pureology’s 2020 formula relaunch presented a different problem. A global crisis made an ordinary beauty announcement harder to place. Innovative PR’s response centered on self-care: a product could offer a small, relaxing experience at home. The agency says it delivered a creative mailer to more than 400 influencers and media recipients in under four weeks.
That is a concrete change in approach. The audience’s circumstances supplied the message, and a package supplied the encounter. According to the case study, coverage followed in beauty trade, consumer and entertainment outlets, including Glossy, InStyle and Behind The Chair.
The transferable idea is modest enough to be useful: begin with the recipient’s day. A launch date is urgent to the company. A reason to use the product makes it relevant to someone else. The mailer translated between those two perspectives.
An editorial reading of the campaign pattern, not a measured conversion funnel.
Sometimes the star is behind the chair
For Joico, Innovative PR worked on a campaign around Frederic Aspiras, Lady Gaga’s hairstylist on House of Gucci. The agency describes a yearlong plan with broadcast opportunities, podcast interviews and a screening, followed by a dinner honoring his Oscar nomination. The professional’s craft gave a haircare brand a way into a much larger entertainment conversation.
Joico’s own account of the screening gets wonderfully specific about the work: recreating period hair meant returning to techniques such as wet-set rolls and back-combing. That is something a reader can picture. A bottle’s claim becomes more interesting when attached to a person making a difficult creative decision.
The distinction is useful for a brand choosing a spokesperson. Fame attracts attention, but expertise gives the conversation somewhere to go. In this case, there was a film, a character and a working hairstylist to discuss. Innovative PR helped arrange occasions for that discussion.
A hotel can explain a skincare brand
QMS Medicosmetics brings another setting into view. The German skincare brand wanted a US consumer presence alongside expansion into luxury hotels and resorts. Innovative PR’s case study describes press trips, resort launches and partnerships with skin professionals, including a media event at Teton Mountain Lodge in Jackson Hole.
The fit is easy to understand. A hotel is a place where a guest might encounter an unfamiliar skincare brand through a treatment or an amenity. For a luxury product, the surroundings also communicate positioning before anyone opens a presentation. The agency reports editorial coverage and product awards as results of its work.
Its Taiwanese beauty work takes a related approach to a different problem: explaining a category. For SH-RD and Inna Organic, the agency describes learning about Taiwanese beauty practices and turning that knowledge into stories for American audiences. The product arrives with some context about where it comes from.
What the client is actually buying
Innovative PR sells customized communications work to brands. Its service menu spans media relations, creator and celebrity partnerships, content, digital and social communications, event production and product launches. Its market position is a specialist boutique with a strong beauty portfolio and experience extending into lifestyle and entertainment.
The distinctive feature is the combination visible in the cases: people who can explain the product, settings that make it relevant, and outreach that carries the experience beyond the attendees. A client could assemble those capabilities across publicists, producers and creator agencies. Innovative PR offers to coordinate them within one engagement.
For a buyer, the practical brief should connect each expense to a job: agency labor, products and shipping, production, travel or talent where applicable. Agree on what the campaign must accomplish before choosing the spectacle. A brand seeking immediate, attributable purchases needs a different measurement plan from one introducing itself to beauty editors. Counting exposure answers only part of either brief.
More people behind the introductions
In December 2025, the agency announced Nadia Suttle as EVP overseeing strategic initiatives and Katie Lynn as EVP of Media Relations. Suttle’s responsibilities include experiential strategy and key client programs; Lynn continues to lead East Coast operations from New York. The division reflects the two kinds of work running through the portfolio: creating occasions and developing coverage.
The small-brand version of this approach starts well before a Malibu rental. Identify someone who can explain the product credibly. Give that person a useful encounter with it. Make the materials and follow-up easy. Repeat when there is a fresh reason. These campaigns suggest that sequence; a large event budget simply gives it more possible settings.
It depends on having something worth experiencing and an audience for whom it matters. Celebrity attendance alone cannot supply either. The interesting work at Innovative PR happens in the match: sunscreen and a beach, self-care and a mailbox, haircare and the person who made the hair. That is where a product begins to acquire a story someone else wants to tell.
Keep the conversation going
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