TheAudience

theAudience
Industry Social media
Founded 2011
Founder Oliver Luckett, Ari Emanuel, and Sean Parker
Key people
 Oliver Luckett (CEO)
Website www.theaudience.com

theAudience is a social media presence management company, which represents high-profile public figures in the entertainment industry and social media influencers.

Founding

TheAudience was founded by Sean Parker, Ari Emanuel, and Oliver Luckett in 2011, with Luckett serving as the company’s CEO.[1] The president of the company is Kate McLean.[2] The idea for the company came from a meeting between Emanuel and Luckett, set-up by Parker, at which Emanuel voiced concerns over how his clients were not able to effectively control their social media presences. The idea was to create a company to both help manage the social media presence of Emanuel’s clients and others, and to develop social media content for the clients to post, such as photographs, videos, or other posts. Partners in the firm also included the Guggenheim Partners. Initial ideas for work included gaining online endorsement deals for clients or charging for production companies for the right to engage with a client’s followers on their social media platforms. Instead, the company engaged with social media influencers, gaining them endorsement deals, and focused on using the metrics of social media engagement for celebrity clients, as something to be leveraged in contract negotiations.[3]

Company overview

By the end of 2011 the company managed the social media presences of about sixty different celebrity figures,[4] with 300 million Facebook followers. The company worked out of offices in London and New York, with about fifty employees.[1] By November 2012 the company represented about 300 accounts, with around 800 million followers on various social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Its clients also include entertainment projects such as films or music festivals.[2] In October 2013, the company represented about 700 clients, the content from which had about one billion followers per month and ten billion monthly impressions.[5]

Social media management

Part of the work that theAudience does is develop data on the impact a person’s social media has on the revenues of a project they are linked to, helping to leverage that influence in contract negotiations. All posts written by theAudience are vetted and pre-approved before publication by the person being represented in the social media post. TheAudience also vets posts from the projects the artist is involved in, to determine the post’s potential impact on the client’s social media presence. In some cases theAudience also monetizes the relationship between the client and the project utilizing the client’s social media presence.[2]

The company both manages existing presences, and builds online presences for clients that do not yet have an extensive social media network.[6] TheAudience is also involved with the management of social media for political figures, having been involved in the architecture of the social media aspects of the re-election campaign for Barack Obama in 2012.[7]

Influencers network

TheAudience has also developed a network of social media “influencers”, by inviting them to events and giving them access to their clients, which in turn leads the influencer to post about their experience and increase the number of people exposed to high-profile clients and their projects.[8] The majority of revenue comes from the company’s network of influencers, which numbers around six thousand individuals.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/26/theaudience/
  2. 1 2 3 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/business/oliver-luckett-of-theaudience-building-online-fan-bases.html?pagewanted=all
  3. 1 2 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/magazine/turning-microcelebrity-into-a-big-business.html?ref=magazine
  4. ↑ http://www.musowls.org/documents/mustoday/2011/Sept2011.pdf
  5. ↑ http://mashable.com/2013/10/27/celebrities-go-viral-digital-agency/
  6. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/fashion/richard-simmons-internet-star.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
  7. ↑ https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-sideshow/how-oliver-luckett-and-theaudience-are-guiding-the-world-s-most-famous-names-online-171832844.html
  8. ↑ http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/theaudience-internet-microcelebrities-nytimes-magazine/
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