PWTorch.com - WWE NEWS: Two executives gone from WWE, including Creative head and big player in digital department

WWE News
WWE NEWS: Two executives gone from WWE, including Creative head and big player in digital department

Jul 10, 2015 - 3:01:34 PM

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By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

WWE's Creative/management shake-up extends beyond former head writer Brian Gewirtz leaving his consulting role to be full-time at The Rock's production company.

WWE recently let go of 20-year employee Lisa Fox Lee, who was promoted to a new Creative position of "Executive VP of Content" in January. This was reported by Court Bauer on the MLW Twitter on Friday. The decision was made about two weeks ago.

WWE also lost key digital executive Rob Bernstein to a major media agency.

- Regarding Lee, WWE went through a six-month trial run of having Lee oversee Creative, digital programming, and Network programming. The goal was to put all of the main content departments under one umbrella. But, it did not pan out.

According to WWE's press release in January, Lee was to report directly to WWE CEO Vince McMahon as a "key member of WWE's senior management team."

"Lee will oversee WWE’s Creative Writing team with all TV creative continuing to run through Vince McMahon and WWE Executive Vice President, Paul Levesque," WWE said in January.

The main issue is that before her promotion, Lee worked for WWE in various mid-level jobs contributing to TV & PPV content delivery, sales, and social media, but she did not have experience as a key decision-maker in WWE upper management.

Promoting Lee to a high-ranking executive position was viewed internally as a rash decision trying to put all of WWE's content arms under one person. And, WWE employees viewed Lee as the wrong person for the role if such a role was to be created.

The decision was made to fire Lee instead of demote her back to her previous position. It appears that sitting in on meetings with McMahon, who Lee was suddenly reporting to, led to her demise since she was no longer protected in a mid-management role.

After cutting Lee, WWE shifted back to individual content departments reporting to various executives, removing the "one umbrella for all content" approach just six months after the new set-up.

- Regarding Bernstein, this is viewed as a key loss for WWE's digital media business.

Bernstein worked for WWE from 2006 until July. According to his LinkedIn profile, Bernstein was VP of Digital Media from 2006 until January 2015. He was then promoted to Senior VP of Digital Content in February. But, he was still reporting to the inexperienced Lee despite his promotion.

Bernstein was instrumental in turning WWE's YouTube channel in a money-maker and he launched the new video game YouTube channel off-shoot. Plus, he oversaw the WWE App and helped grow the company's website.

Also, Bernstein noted in his LinkedIn profile: "Created and executed on seven-figure digital campaigns for key clients including Microsoft, General Mills, Dominos, and Pepsi."

Bernstein decided to leave WWE and take an executive job with IPG Mediabrands, which is a big media agency that says it "manages and invests $37 billion in global media on the behalf of our clients."