Where Are We Now: Personal Chief Digital Officer

Jacob Shwirtz believes it is time for the Personal Chief Digital Officer. The person whose job it is to engage talent directly on digital strategy, with their best interest in mind (analogous to their personal publicist, for example). This would be someone who actually has experience in this field as a senior digital strategist, not necessarily your average 25-year-old copywriting Snake Person… er… Millennial, but someone who has direct relationships with the platforms, investors, distributors and others who can make a creator’s life easier, and help them derive more benefit from their digital presence.Having completed the portion of his career that dealt with building social platforms and working on the network side, @Shwirtz moved from channels to talent. Landing at Endemol Beyond after Viacom, he was drawn to the fact that this was where the shows were created. This is where everything on the talent level was decided. Being closer to talent felt more exciting to him as that’s where fans wanted to be – even writers rooms became famous on Twitter. His goal, as Chief Social Media Officer, was to inject social into the core of everything and bring digital native talent into the forefront. His goal was “to make the line fuzzy between divisions of digital and linear content,” where some brands still had hard clear-cut divides between these areas. At Endemol, he worked with people like YouTube entrepreneur Michelle Phan and the number one female Viner, Brittany Furlan.While at Endemol, he learned first-hand the power of individual talent (as compared to corporate social media). It doesn’t matter if this is traditional talent or digital native talent, the power remains the same. If it’s someone like Pitbull, who Shwirtz worked with to promote the first airing of his New Year’s Revolution special, the realization was obvious. Fox, which broadcast the special, ran the “official” social media accounts for the show. Endemol had the relationship not just with Pitbull, but with all the talent as well. Utilizing their footprints, they leveraged a much wider audience than any show-run promotions. They created custom content for each act and handled the live tweeting, driving an impact that resulted in the show coming in second, right behind one of the most established brands in the face of television, Dick Clarke’s New Year’s Rocking Eve. “Why have everyone freeze their asses off in Times Square when you can bring people to a beach party in Miami?”Seeing the power of the individual celebrities, Shwirtz was driven to work closer and closer to the talent. And in doing this, he realized that talent (and their existing “teams”) aren’t necessarily the savviest when it comes to digital. This can lead to talent being asked to do things that may not necessarily be in their best interest, which could in turn ruin their authenticity and credibility. And this is where the idea of the PCDO came into play. “Talent today are creating and building their own audiences. They deserve the same level of sophistication that corporate media has.“So can the individual gain the same degree of sophistication that a corporation has? The day we spoke, E! announced the premiere of their new Facebook Live show. The show, filmed and broadcast from an iPhone, is the next step in how content is evolving. This is the corporate version of what individual celebrities (both Hollywood and online) are already doing through SnapChat, Periscope, and Facebook Live. A savvy PCDO will help their talent take advantage of Facebook Live and whatever comes next, and maybe even going as far as to invest in these new startups. They’ll help grow a digital presence that will be more than simply just branded deals where celebrities throw their name on something like a perfume.Shwirtz ultimately feels these PCDOs will become a major force in a talent’s camp. They’ll navigate deals, help make savvy investments, and make sure that the talent can be organically engaged without sacrificing authenticity. This will let the talent keep creating, but let them do so in a more informed matter. In other words, a PCDO can take any talent from Mr. Worldwide to Infinity.