WRITING — 6 July 2018
It's story time.
From news and features, to reviews and interviews, my 15-year career has it all. So grab a beverage, sit back and allow me to take you on a trip through the various forms of writing.
News Writing
Let's start with the basics: news writing. I broke the news on Elon's flamethrower in the Middle East, which amassed a fair amount of eyeballs and trended as a top story on the day, making it to Gulf News' homepage. Cool, yeah? Yep, I think so too.
Descriptive and Informative Content
Besides news, I do enjoy descriptive, helpful and informative content. For example, before Guns N' Roses' epic return to Dubai, we put together a neat listicle for the audience to brush up on the band's history prior to the gig. Having been the Editor of Guides at Gulf News, our content was conceptualised based on analytics — we wrote about what our audience wanted to read. At the time of leaving, Guides saw over 2 million page views per month (2018). Being an astronomy geek, and possessing supreme Editorial power over my brand, one of my favourite pieces at the time was a guide to the Supermoon. Here's a picture of said moon, for a reading break and to ensure I don't bore you with chunks of text.
Feature Writing
Our next stop focuses on one of the most creative forms of journalism: Feature Writing. Having spent 3 years as a features writer, I've written close to 500 feature articles. Hands down, this period was the favourite part of my career. I got to travel the world from South Korea to Las Vegas and every city in between, interviewing C-Suite Executives from the leading consumer technology brands. I even spotted Mark Zuckerberg jogging around Barcelona during MWC2016, while I gently nursed my morning coffee — trying to remember Telegram's party the previous night — partying with Mark Ronson and David Blaine.
Interviews
I've also had the privilege of interviewing phenomenal motorsport athletes where I got a taste in the visual aspect of packaging content, having conceptualised, sourced cars, talent and art directed the cover shoot and photoshoot at Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina Circuit. One of my favourite interviews however, was with Dave Swenson, the Audio Director at Sledgehammer Games, the studio behind Call Of Duty. Here's a quick snippet of the interview:
G: "And now touching on your speciality. One of the coolest parts of your job was to get out on choppers and fighter jets to record audio, how did you manage it for this game? I'm guessing Second World War planes, tanks and weapons were not as easily accessible to you?"
"They weren't accessible, you're right! For Advanced Warfare we looked at a more modern-day scenario and I was able to go to a military base and ride helicopters. So that made it easier. With this it was important to get everything right and accurate. Fortunately a lot of the vehicles and weapons still exist. There isn't a lot of them and not all are working, not all the tanks and planes and jeeps are still driveable so it took some work and some effort to dig out and find where they were. Fortunately Martin Morgan knows people and in addition, he actually owns a lot of the weapons himself. So we went to his home in Louisiana with my whole audio team, set up all our mics and I actually got to fire every Second World War weapon with the microphones recording it."
— Dave Swenson, Audio Director at Sledgehammer Games
Cyber Security
To date, one of my best performing articles was on cyber security — where I spoke to a white hat hacker (an ethical hacker) and listed out how easy it is to hack a smartphone. While it's easily possible and would set you back approximately €115, the aim was to educate our more unsuspecting readers to be more cautious.
The Truth About Heartbreak
Whether it's life imitating art, or the other way around, I went through a break up. My editor at the time channeled my heartbreak into content. This resulted in one of my favourite pieces: "The truth about heartbreak" — where I interviewed a cardiologist in a very interesting article on broken heart syndrome, or as the medical world call it: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. I made a flawless recovery though, spending a weekend in Abu Dhabi, which also serves as a good segue to plug in an example of a creative review of the Park Inn by Radisson on Yas Island.
Op-Ed: #HowIWillChange
Before we end my time at Gulf News, I should mention my Op-Ed which was a personal response to the #MeToo movement. An open letter to young boys, titled "We see your #MeToo, and pledge to raise you a: #HowIWillChange".
Agency Life: Publicis Groupe
Post my journalism stint, I joined another publishing house to overhaul their digital content, as the Group's Digital Content Strategist, migrating their print publications online and on social media. And then I sold out and joined an agency. What follows are a few of my many literary contributions at Publicis Groupe for their client Majid Al Futtaim, the leading shopping mall, communities, retail and leisure pioneer across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The digital and social content included thought leadership posts for the CEO and its previous CEO — including this lil' "urgent" number which I pulled up along the side of a highway to draft. #Dedication
Besides posts such as the above, our team created long-form articles on a range of topics, my favourite being this on the company's "women in coding" initiative. We also produced thought leadership content for the CEO at Expo 2020 Dubai.
Social Copywriting
While C-Suite content was predominantly B2B focused, our team did have fun flexing their B2C copywriting fingertips. A few examples:
BONUS CONTENT
Since you reached the end of this page: I'll leave you with my most comprehensive piece of writing — printed and distributed to over 100,000 readers — my tech review of the iPad mini.
