Lexi Pulling and the art of the right introduction

In the Hollywood Hills, a party can look like an answer to a question nobody thought to ask. A house, a bar, a collection of dresses, people getting ready to be photographed somewhere else. For Lexi Pulling, the useful question begins before anyone arrives: who belongs on the guest list, and what might happen after they leave?

In the run-up to Coachella in 2023, Pulling planned gifting experiences at different scales. Showpo had a Hollywood Hills party with glam stations. Billini Shoes, Gooseberry Intimates and Lioness shared a quieter showroom setting in Downtown Los Angeles. The setting changed with the assignment. A house was one option; a showroom was another.

Pulling explained the selection in practical terms: brands looked for creators whose content suited them or who could help drive sales. Existing relationships mattered, too. A guest who had already worked well for a brand might be someone the brand wanted to invite again. Even a party has a memory.

Her explanation offers a useful entrance to her professional life. Pulling founded Pull Public Relations in 2020 and serves as its CEO. Based in Los Angeles, she works in the business of introducing consumer brands to editors, stylists, celebrities and creators. A successful introduction gives the recipient something worth doing with it.

A conversation at the dressing table

Pulling’s thinking about creators becomes clearest in a remarkably ordinary setting: someone putting on makeup and choosing an outfit. In 2023, she pointed to Alix Earle’s getting-ready videos as an example of how a creator could build a close relationship with an audience. The attraction was the manner of speaking, as though the viewers were friends.

She described the format as beneficial to brands, creators and viewers. Her enthusiasm rested on the fit between the format and the product. Clothes and cosmetics have an obvious place in a getting-ready routine. They can appear while the creator is doing the thing the audience came to watch.

That observation is more interesting than a prediction that a particular video format will become popular. It identifies a relationship already in progress. A brand wants to enter it. The creator has a voice, the viewers have expectations, and a product has to make sense within both. The introduction becomes awkward when the conversation suddenly sounds like someone else wrote it.

It is tempting to imagine publicity as a contest in volume. Pulling’s example suggests a different question: how naturally does the product belong here? A makeup routine supplies a context. An outfit decision supplies another. The item becomes part of an activity with a beginning and an end, rather than an isolated request to buy.

There is a small courtesy in that way of thinking. The audience has already chosen to spend time with a person. Keeping that person recognisable matters. Pulling’s comments give a concrete account of why rapport has commercial value, without requiring the audience to start behaving like a focus group.

“GRWM content is a win-win for brands, creators, and their audiences!”

Lexi Pulling · 2023

The other face of the business

By February 2024, Pulling was applying a related idea to first-time e-commerce founders. Her advice was to invest in social media and in the people responsible for it. She called social media a second face for a business, close in importance to the website itself.

Social media, she wrote, “acts as the secondary face of your business.” The wording is revealing. A face is what another person encounters. It carries an expression. It can welcome someone, confuse them or leave them waiting. A shop may be beautifully built and still have a very poor conversation at the door.

Pulling’s advice included hiring people who could curate the feed and communicate with customers in real time. Those are connected responsibilities, but they demand different kinds of attention. Choosing what appears in a feed shapes the first impression. Answering someone who responds determines what happens to that impression next.

For a founder running a PR agency, this is a useful extension of the job. Publicity can send a person toward a business. The business then has to receive them. A product recommendation followed by an unattended question creates an unnecessarily short relationship. Her emphasis falls on the people needed to continue the exchange.

Her formulation also puts responsibility inside the business itself. An introduction from outside can create interest, but the company controls how it presents its own products and handles the questions that arrive. A feed and a website may be separate screens to the business running them. To the person moving between them, they are encounters with the same company. That makes consistency a practical matter: the promise in one place should remain recognisable in the next.

The connection with her getting-ready example is straightforward. Both begin with someone paying attention and both depend on the quality of the interaction that follows. The creator speaks to viewers; the brand speaks to customers. The technology supplies the channel. Someone still has to choose the words.

The work that fits between the photographs

Pull Public Relations describes its remit across editorial, VIP, influencer and event services. It is a broad set of introductions, each with a different recipient. An editor is looking for material for a story. A stylist is working toward a look. A creator is deciding what belongs in a feed. Putting all three names in a database does not make their needs identical.

The agency’s fall 2026 editorial internship description makes the everyday work unusually visible. It includes drafting press materials, developing pitch angles, building media lists, following industry trends, coordinating samples and tracking coverage. There is writing before an approach, coordination during it, and record keeping afterward. The photograph is only one point along that route.

For someone encountering fashion PR through event pictures, this is an instructive list. A pitch needs a reason to exist. A sample request needs a response. A placement needs to be recorded accurately. Those verbs are less photogenic than a party entrance, although they explain rather more about how the business functions.

Former intern Zoe Leyretana described gaining experience in stylist and editorial pitches, influencer research and industry networking at Pull. In thanking the team, she named Pulling alongside Lulu Buckley, Claire Schultz, Alexandra Cheatham and Sam Drucker. The account places the founder within a working group, with several people involved in what a newcomer learns.

Leyretana also described working in the gifting suite at a Cupshe holiday collection launch. Read beside the editorial tasks, that experience shows how many kinds of work can sit underneath one agency name. The guest sees a product. The team has dealt with the arrangements that make the encounter possible.

A founder among other people

There is another glimpse of Pulling’s professional circle in a March 2024 Cupshe event for Women’s History Month. Misha Kouzeh thanked her among the people involved in making it happen. The event included a panel with Alexis Oakley, Daniela Legarda, Amy Jordan and Doreen Brennan, and support for the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles.

The distinction between organising and appearing matters here. Pulling was thanked for involvement in the event; the panel had its own named speakers. It is a useful reminder that a public gathering contains several jobs, and the person helping bring people together need not be the person holding the microphone.

This makes her a particularly apt subject for a profile about introductions. Much of the visible activity around her concerns other people: a creator addressing viewers, an intern thanking colleagues, a speaker acknowledging organisers. Her work repeatedly appears in the space that allows someone else to have a public moment.

There is a useful change of perspective in following those acknowledgments. An agency founder appears through the work other people describe doing with her team. The resulting picture is specific: pitches being written, an event being assembled, a newcomer learning which questions to ask. Those details make professional relationships visible without turning them into a list of famous acquaintances.

That space can be easy to overlook. An invitation is brief. A relationship can require repeated attention. In the practical examples attached to Pulling’s work, the second part keeps returning: inviting previous collaborators again, maintaining a creator’s familiar voice, answering customers, learning how to pitch. The first encounter has consequences for the next one.

What the next introduction carries

In 2026, Pull PR was named an honoree in The PR Net’s Next Gen Awards. The recognition listed Pulling as CEO alongside Claire Schultz in influencer leadership and Sam Drucker in editorial leadership. Its client roster included Cupshe, Showpo, POPFLEX, 12th Tribe, Gooseberry Intimates and Runaway the Label.

The accompanying Cupshe case study gave agency-reported press-mention counts of 6,252 for 2023 and 7,715 for 2024. That is an increase of 1,463, or approximately 23.4%. Mentions measure appearances in coverage; they do not, by themselves, measure purchases. Keeping the unit attached to the number makes the result more useful.

An award supplies a public milestone for a company founded six years earlier. The more personal thread is in Pulling’s explanations of how she works: choose guests according to the brand’s purpose, pay attention to the relationship a creator has already built, and give a business the people it needs to speak back.

Return to the house in the hills. The dresses and the setting are easy to remember. Pulling’s part of the story begins with the less visible decision that put a particular person in that room. After the invitation comes an outfit, perhaps a conversation, perhaps coverage. Each has its own demands. The introduction has to earn what happens next.