OPH work

AJ+

Branding, design, art direction, project management, interactive design, UI, UX.

Inventing the future of news media isn’t easy. What an opportunity to be involved not just in the brand development of such a cutting-edge project, but also the development of the project itself, from messaging to marketing, buidling a team, workflows, workspace planning and helping get a multi-million dollar idea off the ground, signed off and live.

Al Jazeera Media Network (AJMN) originally planned to launch an internet-only TV channel in 2010 as part of its social media strategy but events of the Arab Spring shifted focus for a period. Plans were re-started when we launched Al Jazeera America.

With the purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV to use for Al Jazeera America, AJMN acquired Current’s former headquarters in San Francisco. I travelled to King Street to report on the building and opportunities – which were perfect for the type of channel Al Jazeera wanted to build in the new media hub of the San Francisco Bay Area.

As part of the pitch strategy we created a set of videos to help explain the overall concept and how core elements such as the app would work. This was crucial to gettng full support and buy-in from senior management and executive level stakeholders. Even withtin a media network there is resistance to risk of the unknown and new ideas, and well presented, digestible visual explainers were seen as an effective method of communicating the possibilities and vision.

For the next 18 months I travelled regularly between Doha and San Francisco to help develop the product as well as building the Creative Production team. We worked on video editing templates, developed different formats for the various platforms we wished to target (Facebook video, Twitter etc, all had different audiences with different viewing experiences and expectations), and established workflows.

After months of work and rounds of presentation and feedback, the visual identity was eventually finalised. This project was so exciting and impactful that I found myself working on it even from my hotel room during a holiday. With so much at stake, both financially and reputationally, I was fully committed to ensuring its success.

And after further months of research and piloting and audience profiling, the AJMN executive management were convinced of the project and provided funding and resources for us to scale it to launch capacity. AJ+ was the first incubated project to come out of Al Jazeera’s newly established Innovation & Incubation Department and part of the Networks Digital Strategy.

After further travel and coordination to help settle in the final team, set up workflows and finalise formats and product development, the channel was announced as launched on June 13, 2014. By September 15, 2014, the channel launched fully with the release of the mobile app which we had been developing alongside content with a formidable internal team.

According to Variety, in June 2015 AJ+ became the second largest news video producer on Facebook, and the ninth largest video producer on the platform overall.

Brand and identity work continued with regular promotion through social media and broadcast channels. The freedom you get as an early entrant into a new product market allows space to develop some more creative promotions.

In August 2015, AJ+ released data showing that it had a 600% engagement rate on Facebook, making the network’s Facebook page one of the most engaged news brands in the world. As of August 2024, its Facebook page has 11.6 million followers.

In October 2015, just over a year since launch, AJ+ announced that the channel had reached over one billion views across its platforms.

Art direction, brand strategy, team hiring development and workflows, Manager of Creative Branding, concept development, product development, UI, UX, project management, budget allocation, pitch presentations, remote and local management.