Ewing – whose move to BrainJuicer was revealed by Research earlier this week – explains in a blog post that the job title was “stolen and mutated from Grant McCracken’s book Chief Culture Officer, in which he says that businesses need someone to act as a kind of lens and coalmine-canary for cultural shifts, new ideas and trends”.

“What I want to do at BrainJuicer is play that kind of role for digital culture – social networks, online identity creation, games, collaborative projects, memes, fandoms, start-ups, communities – all the fascinating and creative ways people work and play with the internet. I know more about some of these areas than others, but a new job would be very boring if I already knew everything about it going in.”

Ewing was, until today, social knowledge leader at Kantar Operations, a role he held for three years. Before that was senior content manager at Research International and an internet analyst at Nielsen Netratings.