Mari­ah has her chew­ing gum hold­er and J‑Lo has an inte­ri­or design­er as part of her enrourage. Celebri­ties are known for not doing much for them­selves and now they can have their social media man­aged for them by start­up theAu­di­ence.

If you’re in the mar­ket for media jobs, this is one com­pa­ny that’s going to offer media and tech jobs, and then some.

Fea­tur­ing a tri­umvi­rate of the tech world’s most respect­ed entre­pre­neurs at the helm, new kid on the block theAu­di­ence aims to har­ness the pow­er of social media and make it work for world-weary celebs who need to grow their fan­base and man­age their social media out­put. How­ev­er the company’s begin­nings have been shroud­ed in mys­tery and they won’t even say who their clients are…

What’s the Offer?

Until recent­ly lit­tle was known about theAu­di­ence oth­er than it was found­ed by tal­ent agent and broth­er of Chica­go May­or and for­mer Oba­ma Chief of Staff, Ari Emanuel – him­self immor­tal­ized in TV dra­ma Entourage — and co-founder of DigiSynd Oliv­er Luck­ett who, through the com­pa­ny, man­aged the social media accounts of some of Disney’s biggest prop­er­ties, includ­ing Cin­derel­la. Togeth­er the pair man­aged to lure in Nap­ster and Face­book orig­i­na­tor Sean Park­er and the trio began approach­ing music and movie execs to help their acts man­age their social media feeds.

Despite its high-pro­file found­ing fathers, theAu­di­ence has man­aged to fly under the radar. Snip­pets of infor­ma­tion appeared here and there, but there was no grand announce­ment and no cute viral to sig­nal the company’s arrival. This could be due to the nature of its offer. But what is that offer exactly?

The company’s own web­site gives lit­tle away, but a press release issued at the begin­ning of the year may give the clear­est indication.

“theAu­di­ence man­ages the social media pres­ences of glob­al enter­tain­ment brands and celebri­ties and pro­vides an inte­grat­ed plat­form for the opti­miza­tion and acti­va­tion of their audiences”

So who’s on board?

Ari Emanuel cur­rent­ly heads up the William Mor­ris Endeav­or Agency – one of the country’s most pow­er­ful tal­ent firms, so it’s a pret­ty safe bet that when a William Mor­ris star lands a movie or com­mer­cial deal, theAu­di­ence will step in an nego­ti­ate spots in viral videos or online chat shows. What is clear is that theAu­di­ence is not just going to be about pump­ing out tweets and sta­tus updates.

The com­pa­ny has recent­ly been pret­ty active in a recruit­ment dri­ve – search­ing out tal­ent for open­ings such as ‘Con­tent Cura­tor’ and ‘Direc­tor of Video Part­ner­ships’, so any­one on the look­out for social media or tech­nol­o­gy jobs may like to keep their eye on the company’s website.

Since the incep­tion of social media celebri­ties have dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed the way they inter­act with their fans yet these chan­nels are rife with pit­falls – to have an expe­ri­enced and tal­ent­ed team man­age your accounts and deliv­er an excel­lent ROI in terms of grow­ing fan bases which in turn leads to sell-out gigs, mul­ti-plat­inum records and movie offers, then there’s no won­der famous faces such as Ush­er, Char­l­ize Theron, Mark Wahlberg and Hugh Jack­man have invest­ed in theAu­di­ence. Just why did Rihan­na get her guest spot in the move ‘Bat­tle­ship’? Twen­ty six mil­lion fol­low­ers on Twit­ter says she has some seri­ous social media influ­ence and can bring one or two extra cin­ema­go­ers to the party.

So it seems that while they’ve remained tight-lipped about their activ­i­ties, theAu­di­ence is qui­et­ly man­ag­ing the reach of their high-pro­file clients. As Hype­bot neat­ly puts it: “theAu­di­ence is qui­et­ly try­ing to build a social media empire fit for the red car­pet. Or at least a tal­ent agency for the social media age.”