Vince McMahon apparently didn’t just want WWE employees using social media — he wanted everybody in the company thinking about it. Stephanie McMahon revealed that one idea she brought back from a conference ended up getting taken much further by her father, leaving department heads wondering what the hell their jobs had to do with social media.
Speaking with Michael Hayes on What’s Your Story?, Stephanie explained that Vince never wanted WWE getting so far ahead of a new trend that audiences couldn’t keep up. His goal was to stay just slightly ahead of everybody else, and Stephanie believes he recognized the importance of social media very early.
“He didn’t—he never wanted to be ahead of the curve. He always wanted to be slightly ahead of the curve, but he didn’t wanna be so far ahead that people didn’t understand what was going on. But he just needed to be slightly ahead of the curve. Social media, yeah. I mean, that was—he saw that before anybody else.”
At the time, Stephanie was overseeing WWE’s digital and social media operations. After attending a conference, she returned with an idea she’d heard about making social media a small responsibility spread across the entire company.
“And I remember, because I was in charge of digital and social at the time, and I had been at a conference and come back and I said, ‘Oh, they said it was really interesting that it wasn’t, you know, a hundred percent of one person’s job. It was one percent of a hundred percent of the people’s jobs.’”
Vince apparently heard “one percent” and decided that wasn’t nearly enough. His response was to make social media everybody’s problem in a much bigger way.
“And he said, ‘No, it’s a hundred percent of a hundred percent.’”
According to Stephanie, things quickly reached the point where every WWE department was expected to explain exactly what it was doing on social media. That mandate didn’t exactly go over well with employees who couldn’t figure out why posting online suddenly had anything to do with their actual jobs.
“And it was like everything became about social media, and then all the department heads had to report back what their departments were doing in social media. And people hated it because they had no idea. They were like, ‘Why? What does my job have to do with social media?’”
Hayes remembered that period as well and specifically recalled Vince putting Michael Cole in charge of WWE’s social media efforts.
“I remember when he put Michael Cole in charge of social media.”
Vince’s mandate may have driven people inside WWE crazy at the time, but Stephanie’s story shows just how aggressively he wanted the company to jump onto something once he believed it mattered. What started as her sharing one idea from a conference suddenly turned into every department having to explain its social media strategy.
What do you think about Stephanie McMahon revealing how WWE employees reacted to Vince McMahon’s massive social media push? Let us know in the comments below.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
