NEW YORK, Sept. 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Praytell, the award-winning creative communications agency, today announced it is expanding its Influence Department - which unites Media, Creators and Social under one team - with two senior hires from Village Marketing and FleishmanHillard.
Building on the agency’s momentum at the cutting edge of integrated communications, the expansion brings together industry-leading talent, proprietary technology and a refreshed organizational structure to help brands navigate the ecosystem of cross-channel influence.
With Ciara Benko (EVP) helming the Influence Department, Praytell has appointed Catherine O’Neill (formerly of WPP/Village Marketing) as SVP of Creator Marketing & Paid Media to drive creator and influencer growth, and Paige Weber (formerly of Omnicom/FleishmanHillard) as SVP of Media to lead the media relations team in tackling the hybrid media landscape.
They join existing agency leaders Danielle Moreno (VP, Creator Marketing) and Sofia Gomes (VP, Social Discipline Lead) to round out a premier team of experts blending traditional media excellence, creator strategy and social-first innovation.
The move builds upon the agency’s remarkable growth and integrated creator and social work for flagship global clients, including Burger King, Stanley 1913, and Therabody.
A New Chapter for the “Centers of Influence”
The department was established in January 2025, coinciding with the release of Praytell’s first annual Centers of Influence report in partnership with YouGov — dubbed The Remix Era, focusing on the rise of emerging media.
Findings from year two’s report, coined The Personality Era, reflect the state of the industry — and Praytell’s talent investment marks the next chapter for how brands drive cross-channel influence.
In Q1 2026, Praytell surveyed 3,600 consumers across the US, UK, and Australia in partnership with YouGov to understand how brands effectively break through as the information landscape fragments, emerging channels expand and AI-generated content saturates feeds.
The overarching takeaway for CCOs and CMOs is that audiences are more interested in who is saying something, not just what they are saying.
“We are officially operating in an intimacy economy, where authentic connection matters just as much as the facts," said Beth Cleveland, CEO of Praytell. “Our Personality Era research revealed a profound trust deficit driven by fragmented media and AI saturation. The Centers of Influence practice is our structural answer to that challenge. With this incredible leadership team in place, we aren't just adapting to how influence has changed — we're giving brands the blueprint they need to rebuild relevance, harness the parasocial advantage, and drive real business impact."
Key data driving the Centers of Influence expansion includes:
- PR's Role in the Consumer Journey Has Changed: As AI chatbots inform consumer decisions, earned media's role is expanding to serve as a verification layer that can help brands build authority.
- The Parasocial Advantage: Parasocial interaction is directly correlated with credibility. A brand spokesperson or executive who builds a parasocial relationship with an audience carries the trust needed to make a message land.
- Creators Rival Journalists for Opinion Change: Independent creators and traditional journalists are now nearly identical in their ability to drive opinion change, requiring a fundamental shift in how brands balance earned media and creator budgets.
- The AI Trust Penalty: Undisclosed AI usage triggers a loss in trust, with 70% of US respondents reporting a decline in brand trust. Conversely, brands that pledge to avoid AI in their content receive a measurable credibility boost.
Evolved Offerings to Meet The Moment
To power the practice, Praytell is expanding its suite of proprietary services across earned media, creator and social, designed to help brands act on where trust is actually built today - across earned media, creators and social.
In addition to Praytell’s in-house creative production and social teams, Praytell’s Creator Studio is a rapidly growing offering built to help brands produce high-quality, platform-native, creator-style content at the speed of culture.
Launched in 2025, Creator Studio now features dedicated content creators, including new hire Briana Plantyn, joining Praytell as Associate Director, Content Creation from VaynerMedia, alongside a curated network of 100+ pre-vetted external creators spanning content styles, platforms, audiences and areas of expertise.
Led by Praytell’s creator and influencer experts, this flexible model matches the right creative talent and content style to each brand, brief and audience, while maintaining the strategic rigor and quality of an agency-led approach.
The continued investment reflects rapidly growing client demand: Creator-Generated Content (CGC) needs nearly doubled from 2025 to 2026, as more brands look for a consistent pipeline of authentic, social-first content that can perform across organic and paid channels.
Praytell is also expanding its proprietary Influence Mapping, a data-driven service that analyzes how audiences discover, consume and act on information across an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem. Leveraging proprietary tools, the methodology gives brands a clearer picture of who and what actually shapes their audiences — and a more sophisticated framework for planning and measuring integrated communications.
Praytell PULSE, the agency’s network of journalists and creators who support strategic planning, is broadening to include new industries and diversified media platforms, bringing more diverse perspectives into the room before ideas go to market.
Finally, Swingset Studio, Praytell’s AI Innovation Lab, has launched Praytell PulseCheck. PulseCheck turns signals from the past and present into a view of what’s next by analyzing historical coverage, consumer conversation and search behavior to predict which stories, pitches and campaign ideas have the greatest potential to break through and why.
The Evolved Leadership Team
To lead the expanded practice, Praytell has assembled a premier team of experts combining traditional media excellence with social-first innovation:
- Ciara Benko, EVP, Influence Department Head: Benko builds influence for brands and practices it herself. As Influence Department Head, she oversees Praytell's media, creators, and social teams, crafting culturally relevant strategies that travel in the current ecosystem. A veteran of Weber Shandwick, Edelman, and Ruder Finn, Benko has worked across corporate communications, consumer PR, and creator marketing — now acting as a strategic force and dot-connector across integrated teams. Outside of work, she’s a freelance journalist and content creator with an audience of 110,000+ across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
- Catherine O’Neill, SVP, Creator Marketing & Paid Media: O’Neill brings over 14 years of marketing experience, leading influencer strategy for global brands including Unilever, Ford and Mars, high-growth DTC companies, and landmark cultural moments—including the first-ever influencer program for a U.S. presidential campaign. She joins from Village Marketing, where she helped scale the agency through its acquisition by WPP. At Praytell, she will lead creator marketing and paid media, building creator strategies that drive both cultural relevance and measurable, down-funnel performance.
- Paige Weber, SVP, Media Team Lead: Joining Praytell after nearly a decade as a leader at FleishmanHillard, Weber has shaped strategies for giants like PepsiCo Foods, WaterWipes, Lowe's, Amazon, and Chase Sapphire. Known as a sharp, steady media leader, Weber ensures best-in-class media relations by executing "traditional" strategies with excellence while meaningfully engaging with new platforms and creators.
- Sofia Gomes, VP, Social Discipline Lead: Gomes brings more than 15 years of experience across social strategy, entertainment production, and creator partnerships, with work spanning Jellysmack, NBC, Entertainment Tonight, and ABC. That range has given her a practical understanding of what it takes to get from a strong idea to work that actually lands across different platforms, formats, and audiences. At Praytell, she leads the social discipline, shaping the agency's social offering and helping bring more structure to the creative process so strong ideas can travel further and drive real business impact.
- Danielle Moreno, VP, Creator Marketing: With 12 years of experience in creator marketing, Moreno began her career in-house at leading beauty companies Coty and Avon before moving agency-side, first at Influential and, for the last five years, at Praytell. Throughout, she has been at the center of the creator economy, navigating its shifts and reshaping right alongside it; an instinct that gives her a real read on where the landscape stands today. At Praytell, she leads creator marketing operations, building the systems, structure and team that turn the agency's blue-chip client roster into scaled, dependable execution.
"Influence today is about resonance and trust," said Ciara Benko, EVP, Influence Department Head at Praytell. "By convening our media, social, and creator teams in one operational engine, we are structuring our agency exactly how modern audiences consume content - crafting stories that travel seamlessly through culture and across platforms."
For more information about Praytell’s Centers of Influence practice and to download The Personality Era report, please visit praytellagency.com.
About Praytell:
Praytell is a creative communications agency that drives influence by taking a remixed approach to earning attention across channels and platforms. We blend tried-and-true tactics with what’s new and next to craft unexpected, culturally inspired campaigns that influence audiences, shape opinions, and spark conversations. Praytell’s Creative That Earns Methodology delivers real attention with real impact for leading brands like Stanley 1913, Burger King, BWH Hotels, Peet’s Coffee, Destination Canada, Therabody and Clairol. Learn more at praytellagency.com.
Media Contact:
Jeannie Evanchan
jeannie@praytellagency.com
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/1a683d06-1f02-4e4d-b249-11b9f5c7b5a6
