This year, Cinch PR celebrates its 20th anniversary — a milestone built on deep client relationships, a knack for reviving legacy brands, and a growing sports and entertainment portfolio that's worked with everyone from the NBA to Roger Federer. We sat down with founder and president Alli Goldstein to talk about her path into hospitality and lifestyle comms, how the agency has evolved alongside a shifting media landscape, and what's next for Cinch as it heads into its next chapter.
What first drew you to hospitality and lifestyle comms, and what inspired you to build an agency around them?
I started my career in the fashion industry in New York City and quickly realized I wasn't excited about a long-term future in corporate retail. Knowing how much I enjoyed writing and could "work a room," my boyfriend at the time (now my husband!) introduced me to a friend of a friend who worked in travel PR at Ruder Finn (now Finn Partners). I remember being amazed that one could actually have a career in that — global travel, creative writing, pitching top media, planning and attending events. I was hooked from the start.
I was fortunate enough to land on the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts account during a period of major global growth, and I got to play a role in new hotel openings in Dublin, Cairo, and Paris. It was a dream to learn hospitality from the very best in the business. The Founder of Four Seasons swore by the Golden Rule: treat others how you want to be treated. That same rule has shaped how I run Cinch PR to this day.
After graduate school at Northwestern, where I wrote the original business plan for Cinch PR, I worked with Hyatt and then Kimpton Hotels. Returning to San Francisco with Kimpton and managing 15 PR agencies across the US and abroad, I saw the gap clearly: tech was taking over and lifestyle was an afterthought, yet hotels and restaurants were booming and someone needed to promote them. That's how Cinch PR was born.
Cinch PR marks its 20th anniversary this year — congratulations! Looking back, what are some of the defining moments that shaped the agency's evolution since you launched it in 2006?
Thank you! It's incredible to think we've been operating for two decades, and I'm truly grateful for how rewarding this career continues to be.
Three moments stand out: long employee and client loyalty, success reviving legacy brands, and the organic growth of our Sports & Entertainment business.
We're a service business, so it's our clients and our people who define us. Our clients average over five years with Cinch, and we have that same tenure with our team. That kind of longevity means we can go deep, solve real communication problems, and help clients hit ambitious revenue goals instead of just chasing quick wins.
We've also realized we're particularly good at reinvigorating legacy brands. We'd rather work with "tried and true" than "fancy and new," and there's real satisfaction in getting beloved businesses back on the radar of people who matter. Standout clients here include Timbuk2, Blue Bottle Coffee, Palisades Lake Tahoe, SusieCakes, St. Francis Winery, Laura Chenel, Marin French Cheese, Hyatts of Hawaii, and Traditional Medicinals, to name a few.
The third defining moment is our Sports & Entertainment growth. Cinch has always worked well with celebrity athletes, starting with Joe Montana and Joint Juice, then Jonny Moseley and Palisades, then the 49ers with the launch of Levi's Stadium. Since then, we've been hired by the NBA for All-Star Weekend and by Roger Federer for the Laver Cup. Running a massive media center with dozens of press events and celebrity interviews happening simultaneously is its own art form, and it's become one of our strongest muscles as an agency.
Your agency offers everything from media relations to events to partnerships — how has your service mix evolved to keep pace with what clients need?
Evolve is the key word. Cinch has lasted 20 years because we've evolved alongside our clients, their customers, and the media landscape itself.
Twenty years ago, our job was almost entirely relationship-driven: writing press materials, planning events, meeting the media in person. That core hasn't gone away. If anything, earned media has gained new relevance in an AI era, when audiences are hungry for coverage they can trust.
What's changed is everything around it. Lifestyle clients were slow to go digital, but social media, and later performance PR, became essential tools, not optional ones. Today, a single campaign might touch media relations, influencer partnerships, social strategy, and performance marketing all at once — particularly for our retail and CPG clients, where purchase-based results require more cross-channel traffic than ever.
How has the PR and communications landscape changed in hospitality and lifestyle since you started Cinch — and how has AI or the influencer/creator shift changed the way you approach campaigns?
Today's consumer has more options than ever, and expects to have them instantly.
Hotels are far more experiential now. Twenty years ago, amenities meant a restaurant and a spa; today it's full-scale wellness centers, celebrity chef classes, even glow-in-the-dark synchronized swimming. Restaurants have NA cocktail menus and gluten-free desserts and have ditched the white tablecloths. Retailers care more about driving sales online than foot traffic to brick-and-mortar.
The media landscape has shifted just as fast. Twenty years ago, media was the whole strategy. Today it's one piece of a much bigger mix: earned media, trade and paid influencer partnerships, event support, and a growing list of influential channels, from Instagram and TikTok to podcasts and conferences.
AI is changing things for us too. We're leaning into these tools for efficiency and fine-tuning materials on the backend, but the work still needs a human touch to be impactful. AI is also changing how our clients think about PR itself: they want to show up in these tools' outputs, and we're seeing media coverage play a huge role in how they get there.
What distinguishes a truly successful partnership or campaign in your world today — one that goes beyond just good press?
Amplification across every channel relevant to the brand. When we build a campaign, we make sure it reaches each of our target audiences, which almost always requires going beyond press coverage. On social, that means posting to every platform where the brand has a presence, not just the easy one, so we're reaching different audiences on each.
"Authentic" gets thrown around a lot in partnership conversations these days, often as a buzzword more than a standard. In our experience, the partnerships that actually work come from creators and brands we have real history with, not one-off collaborations. Alignment matters, but consistency and familiarity with a creator and their team are what actually move the needle.
You clearly have your finger on the pulse of the best of the city — where might we run into you around the Bay Area?
I live in the Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco, which has some of the best restaurants in the city. Ariake is my go-to for sushi, Pearl 6101 has the most delicious white bolognese pasta, and nothing beats the old-school SF vibes and margaritas at Tia Margarita.
I recently had a memorable meal with friends at RT Bistro in Hayes Valley, and on Father's Day my whole family took electric scooters to Maillards in the Outer Sunset for their smashburgers.
When I'm not working, I'm walking my dog, Roxy, through Golden Gate Park, or playing tennis with my husband, Kevin.
As you celebrate this agency milestone, what's next for Cinch PR?
We feel incredibly proud to hit this milestone, and we're just as excited about the next 20 years. We want to keep growing our team here in San Francisco, expand our Sports & Entertainment portfolio and our retail and CPG roster, and keep pushing the industry forward on why PR still matters in a rapidly changing media landscape.
