Role/Projects: Working as a freelance copywriter for Modem Media, I led creative efforts in building some of ge.com's "industry portals," which are basically launching pages aggregating all of GE's different sites and content for a particular industry (so GE could offer an industry a complete set of business solutions from one Web page). This involved sifting through tons of different GE sites, organizing and positioning the best and most relevant content for each industry (Health Care, Telecom, and Retail), and writing some snappy copy and headers to tease it all.

I also led copywriting efforts for ge.com's Pressroom re-design—which doesn't sound like a big deal on the surface, but really wound up being pretty HUGE (in caps, even), as the re-design was organized around the announcement of retiring GE CEO Jack Welch's successor. Ultra-top secret stuff, it involved reading and learning all about Welch's career and the GE Operating System, then writing/organizing the new Pressroom content and concepting/writing a Flash piece that would describe their business operating system.

The Results: The portals I wrote were GE's attempt to leverage the immense volume and diversity of content that their many different sites had for each industry segment. The problem: Much of it was really bad content, total boilerplate stuff—so making it seem useful and attractive (after performing an extensive content audit on all of it) was a real challenge. Also, some internal GE politics (different divisions fighting for placement on the portal page) wound-up changing the final copy that appears today (in some cases, for the better). However, GE was extremely pleased by the overall results, and they have since expaned their industry portals.

I was much happier with the results of the ge.com Pressroom re-design. While, again, there was some superfluous editing of/adding to the copy of the Flash piece that went along with the re-design, overall I'm pleased at the final result. It (and the re-designed layout) was a big hit at the announcement of Welch's successor in late November 2000.

The Links:

• ge.com Industry Portals:
  • GE Health Care Industry Portal
  • GE Telecom Industry Portal
  • GE Retail Industry Portal

• ge.com Pressroom Re-design:
  • ge.com Pressroom
  • GE Operating System Flash Piece—unfortunately, this is no longer online.