David Fairs joins Whisk Media as creative director
Whisk Media has appointed David Fairs as a creative director.
The announcement:
Whisk Media announces appointment of David Fairs as Creative Director
Whisk Media Group has appointed former NewsCorp Digital Art Director David Fairs as Creative Director with responsibility for leading the next stage of innovation in content development and publishing for the Group as it responds to growing demand from leading food and cooking brands across the nation. The appointment follows 5 years of rapid growth for the one-time start up, which now provides specialist content development and production for food and cooking brands and is the publisher of www.myfoodbook.com.au with a monthly audience reach of over 5.5million.
David Fairs has more than 14 years’ experience in print and online publishing. Most recently he lead the design and production of the Woolworths Fresh Magazine and App relaunch. He has also worked with the publishing and digital teams at Taste.com.au managing art direction, photography & video for interactive editorial content across all of the NewsCorp mastheads.
Carolyn Brasher, founder of Whisk Media Group and www.myfoodbook.com.au, says the appointment reflects the rapid growth of the company fuelled by growing demand within the food and cooking sector for the unique offering of content development and publishing devoid of a traditional advertising mentality. “myfoodbook.com.au was conceived as a platform to promote content produced by leading food and cooking brands. However, our customers soon recognised that our success in producing a content driven marketing environment powered by deep consumer insights uniquely positioned us to produce their content in response to the needs of our consumer audience”, said Ms Brasher.
“This has allowed us to develop a vertically integrated model in which our consumer data drives the production of high quality and relevant content for our customers that is then published by us on www.myfoodbook.com.au and the food brand’s own platforms.”
“The quality of the content and our understanding of how consumers engage with that content means we have created a high quality environment for consumers devoid of the clutter and irrelevance of the traditional advertising model. We’ve built this entire business by rejecting programmatic and display advertising and many of the other approaches that distract and infuriate consumers and cheapen the value of our customers’ brand.”
Ms Brasher believes the appointment of David Fairs is evidence of both strong support within the food and cooking sector for a content driven marketing model and the demand of leaders in the sector to work for a publisher not trapped by traditional advertising and marketing thinking. Mr Fairs agrees saying that the uniquely integrated model and a culture of driving innovation in content development and publishing attracted him to Whisk Media Group.
“I was really impressed with the different approach the Whisk team take to content strategy and production including the integration of insights from the myfoodbook platform. The two teams work perfectly hand-in- hand”, said Mr Fairs.
“It’s also great to be joining the business as it prepares to launch a refreshed website and new publishing features later in the year.”
In his first days at the company Mr Fairs has already overseen the launch of a new subscriber exclusive printed cookbook, which is distributed to consumers who have participated in market research that delivers targeted insights to participating brand partners.
“The subscriber exclusive cookbook is a great example of the different approach at Whisk”, said Mr Fairs. “Everyone in the industry is always talking about the death of print, the death of magazines. But here is an example from a digital start-up of a high quality print product supported by leading food and cooking brands who received deep consumer insights in return.”
Whisk Media Group will be making further staffing announcements in the coming months as it introduces more innovation to the market. That will include the launch of new insights and solutions to closing the loop in the ‘path to purchase’ and the release of new subscriber exclusive products.
Congrats Dave! Whisk are lucky to have you.
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