Based on my success with Hertz and other travel campaigns, Stickeyes agency retained me on several related projects once I’d left them to go freelance. One such project was Etihad, which was a huge undertaking – thousands of pages. These ranged from information and inspiration pages such as the one shown about diving and snorkelling, but also route pages for every single permutation that Etihad offered. That means Hyderabad to Washington, but also Washington to Hyderabad. And everywhere else you could fly with Etihad from those and countless other places. Every route, every flight time, every stopover, would have to be checked.
While I did a tiny bit of writing on this project, my role was final sign-off editor. The pieces would be briefed in to writers, returned to Stickyeyes and given an initial edit. After revisions by the writer and another edit, they’d then come to me for a final polish and sign-off. This is where attention to detail and tone of voice documents are essential. Does the client love Oxford commas, hate Oxford commas or not give a flying one? Do they have a preference for the en-dash or the em-dash? What cultural sensitivities do we need to be constantly aware o
This type of project, on this scale, and with so many moving parts, doesn’t really work if you’re in isolation, so we had twice-weekly video calls to discuss the project and for me to feedback to all the writers and first-round editors. This allowed me to encourage them where they were nailing it, and nip ongoing issues in the bud. It also meant we could constantly update the client’s TOV document and project brief with all the latest learnings and feedback.