Sundial Media & Technology Group launched THEIA, a global Influencer Marketing agency, in June 2026, built around the premise that brands benefit from creator strategy running through the same infrastructure as their media and live event investments. The new agency sits inside a portfolio that includes ESSENCE, Refinery29, SOMOS, AFROPUNK, and Beautycon, along with a recurring events calendar anchored by Essence Festival of Culture, Black Women in Hollywood, and Black Women in Sports.

“Think of THEIA as the place to go to really work with creators in a way that really influences culture and their brand identity,” says Pamela Zapata, THEIA’s founding head. Pamela, who founded Society 18 in 2019, a creator management and marketing agency that has specialized in multicultural and multiethnic talent, was brought into Sundial by Chief Product Officer Cedric Rogers to build out the agency’s creator offering. At launch, Society 18 entered a preferred creator agency partnership with THEIA, giving the division immediate access to a roster of creators across entertainment, beauty, fashion, and lifestyle.

The financial logic behind the timing is partly market-driven. The Creator Economy is projected to reach an estimated $500 billion by 2027, and Sundial’s existing brand relationships, Coca-Cola among them through Essence Festival, represented an opening to extend what the company offers. THEIA, under CEO Kirk McDonald’s leadership, is Sundial’s answer to that demand, designed to capture creator marketing budget that might otherwise route to standalone agencies. More importantly, Pamela argues, it is built to give brands creator strategy that draws directly on editorial storytelling and live experiences managed under the same roof.

Creator Strategy Belongs in the Media Plan, Not Beside It

A brand that purchases media through one company, creator campaigns through a second, and event sponsorships through a third ends up with aligned budgets but disconnected results, according to Pamela. No single partner can see enough of what the brand is building to make each investment inform the others. That is the problem THEIA is designed to solve.

“Creator marketing needs to be a part of your strategy as you go to market, not just an add-on,” Pamela says. “It has to be ingrained in how you show up.”

THEIA’s approach, as Pamela describes, starts with a brand’s business objective rather than a channel allocation. The agency then determines which parts of the Sundial ecosystem create the most impact for that objective. A brand trying to build credibility in a specific community can enter through creators. One seeking editorial weight might prioritize Refinery29 or SOMOS. A brand looking to own a cultural moment might lead with Essence Festival and embed creators into that activation.

Sundial’s media properties feed cultural intelligence into creator strategy. Creator relationships, in turn, inform editorial narratives across the portfolio. Live experiences generate content and community activity that extends past the event itself. “Each capability strengthens the others,” Pamela notes in the Q&A.

Seasonal Activations Signal Exactly What Brands Don’t Want to Signal

When brands activate creator campaigns around Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, or Coachella and then disengage, the communities those campaigns target notice. Pamela is direct about the signal it sends.

“It feels transactional,” she says. “It feels like you’re only looking at us during these moments.” The question she poses to those brands is not rhetorical: how do you show up in a way that is connected to the community year-round, rather than positioned only for the campaign window?

New Balance shifted its perception from what Pamela describes as a “dad shoe” to a brand with credibility among Gen Z and millennial tastemakers by aligning with creator voices already shaping fashion and streetwear culture, before building commercial conversion. Poppi embedded creators into its marketing strategy, turning the product into a lifestyle and community identity rather than running influencers as paid media placements. Pamela, drawing on both cases, argues that neither outcome came from treating creator marketing as a campaign add-on.

THEIA’s near-term proof of concept follows the same logic. Society 18 has run an annual Hispanic Heritage Month mixer celebrating Latino culture through food, music, and creator community. THEIA is integrating Sundial’s SOMOS property into that event as a co-presenting partner, giving brands an entry point into a community gathering that predates their involvement, rather than a branded event assembled to serve their campaign.

Representation Across Every Dimension, Not Just Ethnicity

THEIA’s approach to creator diversity is explicit about scope. Pamela describes the target as people “from all walks of life,” a definition she extends to age, disability, religion, and body type alongside ethnicity. She says it encompasses “thinking about diversity in not just one or two ways, but in all the ways that it exists in real life.”

That framing draws directly from Pamela’s experience at Society 18, where the representation mandate grew out of a concrete pay problem. Working on the brand side managing influencer campaigns for the Estée Lauder portfolio and for Unilever, she watched diverse creators representing themselves quote rates far below market standard because no one had told them otherwise. Society 18 was built to address that disparity.

Sundial’s portfolio provides structural support for the wider diversity mandate. ESSENCE and SOMOS anchor the multicultural and multiethnic reach; Refinery29 and Beautycon extend the offering to broader audiences of women and lifestyle consumers. Society 18’s preferred partner status at THEIA means Pamela’s existing creator relationships are available at launch, spanning talent her agency has campaigned with over years rather than a roster assembled for the occasion.

Year One Success Is a Repeat Partnership, Not a Campaign Recap

Pamela’s near-term priorities center on embedding creator strategy into Sundial’s existing sales conversations rather than building a parallel pitch track. When brands engage Sundial through existing relationships, creator marketing should appear as part of the integrated offering, not as an optional layer addressed in a separate meeting.

Essence Festival in July 2026 served as an early model. Pamela led creator programming at the festival, producing a podcast stage that gave Society 18 talent panel and moderation roles, and co-hosting a creator kickoff event with Refinery29 and SOMOS before the main festival programming began. Creators were embedded in editorial, on stage, and in the community before any brand campaign activated around them.

Pamela’s definition of a successful first year for THEIA does not hinge on campaign metrics. She is looking for brands to return with expanded scopes of work rather than treat the first engagement as a test. “A key marker of success will be whether brands view THEIA as a long-term strategic partner, not just a campaign execution partner,” she says. Alongside repeat partnerships, she wants to trace specific business outcomes, audience growth, sentiment shifts, and conversion data back to the creator relationships that drove them.

Sundial’s Bet Is That Integration Compounds What Silos Cannot

Creator marketing spend is surging. Brands are already allocating budget across creators, media, and events. THEIA’s argument is that the same dollars, routed through a single partner with Sundial’s existing infrastructure, produce compounding returns rather than additive ones.

Over the next three to six months, Pamela plans to take THEIA to market more formally, establishing the agency’s positioning alongside Sundial’s media and experiential offerings and strengthening partnerships with creator management companies that can supply talent for those programs.

“You can really come to Sundial for all of your marketing needs,” Pamela says. “We could put together 360 campaigns that will hit all of your objectives as a brand.”

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