Praytell is expanding its Influence Department with two senior hires, bringing media relations, creator marketing and social under one leadership structure. Catherine O’Neill joins from Village Marketing as SVP of Creator Marketing & Paid Media, while Paige Weber joins from FleishmanHillard as SVP of Media. EVP Ciara Benko continues to lead the department.
The change is more meaningful as an operating-model decision than as a headline-grabbing agency move. Praytell is formalizing a structure in which earned media, creators and social are planned together, while also adding senior specialists to run the individual disciplines. For clients, the test will be whether that structure produces clearer accountability and better cross-channel execution, rather than simply putting several services under a new department name.
Table of contents
Jump to each section:
- What Praytell is changing
- Why the structure matters for clients
- The competitive question is integration, not novelty
- What the expansion does not prove
What Praytell is changing
Praytell’s expanded department places three disciplines that agencies have historically sold and staffed separately inside one operating group. Benko oversees the combined team, with O’Neill responsible for creator marketing and paid media, Weber leading media, Danielle Moreno leading creator marketing operations, and Sofia Gomes leading social.
The agency is also expanding the services attached to the group, including its Influence Mapping work, a network of journalists and creators used for planning, and an AI-assisted forecasting product called PulseCheck. Those tools are supporting details, however. The larger organizational signal is the decision to treat media, creators and social as parts of the same influence problem rather than separate channel briefs.
Benko summarized the premise in the announcement: “Influence today is about resonance and trust.” That framing matches Praytell’s broader research agenda around fragmented media, creator credibility and the role of personalities in shaping how audiences process information.
3,600 weekly media users across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia were surveyed for Praytell’s 2026 research with YouGov, according to The Personality Era.
Key Takeaways
- Praytell is combining media, creator marketing and social under one Influence Department led by Ciara Benko.
- Catherine O’Neill and Paige Weber add senior leadership from Village Marketing and FleishmanHillard.
- The strategic value will depend on whether the integrated structure improves planning and accountability for clients.
Why the structure matters for clients
The practical appeal is straightforward. A campaign can now move from earned-media planning into creator activation, social distribution and paid amplification without being handed between separate practice leaders. That can reduce duplicated briefing and make it easier to decide which audience needs a journalist, a creator, a brand-owned channel or some combination of the three.
The structure also reflects a harder media-planning problem. Praytell’s own research argues that audiences increasingly evaluate who is delivering a message alongside the message itself. The agency says independent creators and traditional journalists are now close in their ability to change opinions, which pushes communications teams to think across sources of authority instead of defaulting to an earned-media-first hierarchy.
70% of US respondents said undisclosed AI use reduced their trust in a brand, according to Praytell’s 2026 research with YouGov.
That does not mean every PR brief should become a creator campaign. It does mean the line between media relations, creator strategy and social distribution is increasingly an operating question. Clients need agencies to make trade-offs across those channels, not simply offer each one as an adjacent service.
The competitive question is integration, not novelty
Praytell is part of Project Worldwide, so it sits between large global network agencies and smaller independent specialists. Its current model can be compared with integrated communications players such as Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard, Golin and MSL, although these are category comparisons rather than exact size peers.
| Agency | Why it is relevant to this category |
|---|---|
| Praytell | Project Worldwide agency formalizing media, creator and social work inside one Influence Department. |
| Weber Shandwick | Large integrated communications agency that competes for cross-channel brand and reputation work. |
| FleishmanHillard | Large integrated communications agency and the previous employer of Praytell’s new media lead. |
| Golin | Integrated PR and communications agency competing for brand, earned and social briefs. |
| MSL | Integrated communications network competing across earned, influence and brand reputation work. |
The distinction, then, is not that Praytell discovered integration. Most major communications networks already sell some version of it. The more relevant question is whether Praytell can make the integration operationally visible to clients through one leadership structure, shared planning tools and fewer internal handoffs.
That is where the two hires matter. O’Neill arrives with creator and paid-media experience, while Weber brings a long media-relations background. Their roles give the department dedicated senior ownership on both sides of a channel mix that agencies often describe as integrated but still manage through separate teams.
What the expansion does not prove
The announcement does not provide client-retention data, campaign-performance comparisons or financial results showing that the new structure is better than a more traditional practice model. Praytell says demand for creator-generated content has grown sharply, but that is a company-reported demand signal, not independent evidence that the reorganized department will improve outcomes.
The move should therefore be read as organizational investment, not a market shift. Praytell is betting that brands increasingly want one senior team to decide how earned media, creators and social work together. That is a credible direction in a fragmented media environment, but its value will show up in client delivery, not in the department chart itself.
For communications leaders evaluating agencies, the useful question is practical: who owns the integrated plan when channel priorities conflict? Praytell’s latest structure gives a clearer answer than before. Whether it produces stronger work will depend on how consistently that answer holds once briefs, budgets and measurement enter the room.