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Year in Review: Michael Fuyala, Bauer Media

Every year, StopPress asks players in the local industry for their reflections on the marketing year that was. Here’s what Michael Fuyala, head of digital at Bauer Media, has to say.

1. Favourite local campaign that isn’t yours

I don’t really watch free-to-air TV these days so hard to say about the big campaigns. One memorable example of sponsor integration into content for me was a Spinoff Snapchat retro game review, in which, Big Pipe was integrated during a short (but clever/hilarious) intermission.

  • Check out the StopPress pick of the year here.

2. Favourite campaign that is yours

The Fashion Quarterly team (including Miss FQ) keep coming up with creative ways to incorporate brands while keeping the content engaging. One example was behind the scenes photos from the spring issue photo shoot, that incorporated a new Chuck Taylor range.

3. Favourite international campaign

Zoolander 2 was pretty entertaining, right from hijacking the catwalk during Paris Fashion Week through to their use of social influencers and some creative shareable gifs on BuzzFeed. It just shows the global awareness you can create online without that many media partners…

via GIPHY

4. Least favourite campaign

Any campaign that lazily uses Facebook for retail offers. Keep out of my feed please!

5. Your own biggest success

It can be tough to find great people in digital media as the skills are really transferable to other industries, yet we managed to attract some great talent this year – maybe it’s the office space or maybe it’s the parties, but the culture is a lot of fun. If you’re looking for a job get in touch.

6. Most significant launch/innovation/thing of the year

Bauer launched some significant products this year. The most bold was Paperboy, rather than throwing in the towel and saying young people don’t read print, the guys said, ‘let’s make something good enough for them to want, then disrupt distribution models to reach them’.

7. What should be un-inevented?

The latest iOS update made it worse, harder to open your phone, use your camera quickly or read long email chains on your iPhone – just the kind of crappy user experience you’d expect from Microsoft not Apple. It would never have happened under Jobs’ watch – just sayin’.

8. Lamest trend

Active Wear.

9. Best brands

Tomato Glasses. Hats off to these guys. If you’re an anxious parent trying to get prescription glasses for a 3-year-old – these are the only guys in the world that make wearable ones.

10. Best stoush

Naz versus pretty much all the bachelorettes (and most of New Zealand). Any publisher that tells you their traffic didn’t soar to new heights on the back of this is lying.

11. Heroes

David Bowie. Fallen.

12. What died in 2016?

Traditional metrics. I think publishers should rethink how they present their audience to advertisers and agencies. The more people you reach across platforms (for example Instagram, Facebook Live, instant articles) the less relevant traditional metrics are in isolation.

13. What’s the biggest mistake marketers will make in 2017?

Trade media devotes disproportionate attention to the latest digital trends and it can be distracting for marketers. Driven by FOMO they can jump onto platforms that are not effective for them, worse yet, they could forget that central to an effective campaign is always a good idea/story.

15. Will the robots become sentient and kill us all (asking for a friend)? 

Not sure. However, my laptop recently spoke to me impromptu which did freak me out.

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