Lydia Chan sits down with Tori Jackson, Senior Manager of Partnerships and Commercial Strategy at Sundial Media and Technology Group — home to Essence, Refinery29 and Beauty Con — to explore how brands earn real loyalty from multicultural audiences they've historically underinvested in and misunderstood.

Tori's central argument is a refusal to flatten: a Black woman from Harlem and a Black woman from Kansas City are not the same consumer, and a strategy that can't tell them apart has already lost both. Drawing on a deliberately non-linear career — Harlem, music labels, fashion PR, cannabis, and now multicultural media — she makes the case for "pick a lane and stay in it," arguing that Black women are simultaneously the most cynical and the most loyal consumers, and that any drift from who you said you were reads as betrayal. She holds up Skims as a masterclass in reaching audiences with a general distaste for the face of the brand but who "can't deny the product," dismantles the "cultural moments trap" (the Juneteenth-then-silence pattern), and champions diversity in the room over diversity in the asset. Her creative test is refreshingly human: will someone cry? One participant said a campaign call "felt like a therapy session" — exactly the connection she's chasing.

With Black spending power near $1.6 trillion yet only roughly 5% of marketing spend reaching Black, Latino and Asian audiences (per a 2023 report), the cost of getting this wrong is enormous. For marketers, brand leaders, and strategists, it's a clear-eyed playbook on segmentation, consistency, and building for longevity over quick hits.

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