Who's behind it
I'm Zainab Salah.
I started writing captions. Now I set what a brand says before the first word is written.
Across eleven brands and seven industries in Egypt and the Gulf, I turn business problems into positioning, campaigns and content systems that can keep moving without repeating themselves. I set the direction in Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic and English — the hook that lands in Cairo is not the hook that lands in Dubai.
I have worked all three sides of the brief: agency, in-house and founder. Zedé Glow is mine. I wrote the content, built the shop and bought the traffic — so I know what a piece of content costs before I ask anyone to make it.
- Agency & in-house
- Egypt & UAE
- 11 brands
- 7 industries
- 4 years
AI tools
Platforms
Software
Where the work happened
THREE SEATS.One brief.
Agency, in-house, and a brand I own. Each seat answers a different question: who writes the brief, who executes it, and who carries the cost when it is wrong. I have worked from all three.
Eleven brands · seven industries · Egypt & the UAE
Reels Marketing
Agency · UAE · seven brands
The brief arrives written. I turn it into direction.
Open the agency side
Semak
In-house · Egypt · three brands
Nobody hands me a brief. I write it.
Open the brand sideOn my own
Product & my own brand · UAE + Egypt
I write the brief, then pay for it.
Open the product sideMarket 01 of 02
United Arab Emirates
Seven brands · agency side at Reels Marketing · 01—07
Gulf market, Gulf Arabic, and clients who measure in bookings. I receive the brief and execute it — across real estate, automotive, medical, tracking and logistics.
01 / The Proof
SFI
Properties
Content direction · Format testing · Scripting · Tone of voice
This was never a content problem.It was a decision problem.
The Situation
The feed only sold projects: property, price, call. At 1,100 followers, it gave people no reason to stay unless they were ready to buy.
The Decision
People don't follow inventory.
They follow people.
I moved founder Ahmed Assi to the front, speaking from experience rather than inventory. Hooks, formats and CTAs were then tested around that voice.
Selling stayed. It stopped being the only reason to watch.
On this account, useful founder-led content earned attention that inventory posts did not — and that gap became the strategy.
The Work
12 selected pieces · reels & carousels
The Result
- 506,206
- Organic views
in 30 days - 248,477
- Accounts
reached - 73.6%
- From people who
didn't follow the account - 0%
- From paid
distribution
Followers went from 1,100 to 2,000 — and the ones who arrived came for the person, not the listing.
Designed & built by Zainab Salah
Content needs
a system.
I built Engine Court’s content workflow platform to bring the plan, the post and the approval into one place.
Explore the platform 42-second walkthrough · the platform running
Reels · Engine Court
Four reels from the content track — a question drivers actually ask, answered before anything is sold.
03 · Reels Marketing
Cady Royal
A medical centre with branches in Dibba, Fujairah and Al Ain. The account has to turn a scroll into a booked appointment, in a category where people would rather not ask the question out loud.
The account
- Specialism
- Multi-branch medical centre — IV therapy, dermatology and laser, dentistry, cupping and pain treatment
- Based
- Fujairah, Dibba and Al Ain
- Audience
- Arabic-speaking patients, booking by phone at the branch nearest them
What I did
- Planned the feed around three reasons to post — explain a treatment, answer a worry, or carry an offer with a real date — so it is never just a run of discounts.
- Wrote every hook the way a patient thinks — the symptom first, the treatment second, so a post answers the worry before it names a service.
- Ended every post on one action — the branch to call — in the same place each time.
The Work
Six pieces · selected from the feed
04 · Reels Marketing
GPS
Vehicle tracking for the Syrian market, sold to two very different people from one account: the man with a single car, and the company running a fleet.
The account
- Specialism
- Smart vehicle tracking — GPS units, live alerts and in-cab cameras, with fitting and support
- Based
- Homs, Syria
- Audience
- Arabic-speaking drivers and fleet owners, enquiring over WhatsApp
What I did
- Split the plan into two tracks, individual driver and fleet, so every post knows which of them it is talking to.
- Wrote each hook around a fear or a job rather than the device — the driver who takes the long road alone, the fleet moving food and medicine that cannot sit in the heat.
- Kept the specs short and in plain Arabic; the model number is there for whoever wants it, never in the headline.
The Work
Six pieces · selected from the feed






05 · Reels Marketing
Gulf Express
A Dubai freight company talking to other businesses — a hard audience to hold, because nobody follows logistics for entertainment.
The account
- Specialism
- Cargo and freight — shipping, transport, dry and cold storage, customs clearance
- Based
- Dubai, UAE
- Audience
- Businesses moving goods in and out of the Gulf, in Arabic and English
What I did
- Built the plan around one worry per post — delay, cost, tracking, damage — instead of listing services.
- Wrote headlines to be read in two seconds at a red light — one promise each, the time or the safe pair of hands, never both at once.
- Kept the Arabic in Gulf register and the ask to a single line, the same one every time.
The Work
Four pieces · selected from the feed
06 · Reels Marketing
Dr. Makkiya
A plastic surgeon in Jumeirah, Dubai. The account has to earn trust long before it books a consultation, in a field where people research quietly and ask nothing.
The account
- Specialism
- Plastic surgery — body contouring, liposuction and breast surgery
- Based
- Jumeirah, Dubai
- Audience
- Arabic and English speakers researching a procedure, booking over WhatsApp
What I did
- Planned an education-first feed — pre-op and recovery advice, and the awareness days — so the account is useful before it sells.
- Wrote the posts as answers to what people actually search — how long recovery really takes, what the first week feels like — so the question itself becomes the headline.
- Turned each answer into numbered steps a patient can act on, and kept every claim inside what a doctor is allowed to say.
The Work
Three pieces · selected from the feed



07 · The agency itself
Reels Marketing
The agency behind the six brands above. Alongside its clients I ran its own page — the content plan and the account management. An agency’s own feed comes after client work, and it still has to sell the agency.
Reels · Reels Marketing
Five reels from the agency’s own account — short-form ideas written and scheduled as part of one content plan.
Designs · Reels Marketing
Eighteen static designs from the agency’s own content system — brand education, positioning, process and proof.


















Market 02 of 02
Egypt
Four brands · Egypt · 08—11
Egyptian Arabic, a category that repeats itself, and no agency across the table to hand the strategy question to. Three brands in-house at Semak — and one that is mine outright.
08 / The Proof
Penduline
Baby
Baby care · Egypt · Semak (in-house)
Eighteen months of storytelling, not a posting calendar — eight campaigns, 103 posts, eight worlds, one character.
They still read as one brand.
Every month had a story before it had a post: the world it happens in, who Peno is inside it, what the mother is being told, and where the product earns its place. The calendar came last.
Brand narrative · Audience strategy · Monthly narrative direction · Character strategy · Campaign concepts · Influencer & UGC scripting
The Situation
In baby care, trust comes before the product.
First-time mothers are deciding who to trust while the category repeats the same words: gentle, safe, from day one. Penduline needed a reason to matter between product announcements.
The Decision
Stop publishing a calendar.
Start telling a story.
- 01One constant
Eight different worlds, one cue running through all of them — a post is recognised before a word is read.
- 02One story per month
Posts became chapters, not a list of things to say.
- 03Peno becomes an actor
The character demonstrates the product instead of decorating it.
- 04Replace claims with proof
Make the mother verify the label herself.
The account
Where the work
actually lived.
3,328 posts and 179K followers. Eighteen months of that feed is what this case is drawn from.
The Work
Eight campaigns.
One recognisable brand.
Reels · Penduline Baby
Five reels from the Penduline feed — written in Egyptian Arabic, with Peno carrying the story and one clear ask at the end.
All reels on Instagram
09 · Semak
Toffee Kids
An Egyptian kids’ hair and body care brand, where the mother pays and the child decides. Every post has to work on both at once.
The account
- Specialism
- Kids’ hair and body care — toffee-scented, natural ingredients, at an accessible price
- Based
- Egypt
- Audience
- Mothers who buy and children who choose, in Egyptian Arabic
What I did
- Planned the year around moments the family already has — back to school, Ramadan, the beach — so there is a reason to post that isn’t the product.
- Wrote in kids’ Egyptian Arabic and cast the products as characters the child takes sides with, so the post is a story before it is a shelf.
- Gave the mother her own line inside the same post — value, safety, what is in it — so one piece speaks to two people.
The Work
Twelve pieces · selected from the feed












Reels · Toffee Kids
Four reels in kids’ Egyptian Arabic — the product plays a character the child takes sides with, and the mother still gets her line.
10 · Semak
Oral
Penduline’s oral care and air freshener line. It has no account of its own: it runs on the Penduline feed, which is the profile shown here.
The account
- Specialism
- Children’s oral care and air fresheners, part of the Penduline range
- Based
- Egypt, and the Gulf through Penduline
- Audience
- The Penduline following — the line has no feed of its own, in Egyptian Arabic
What I did
- Wrote each piece around one moment in a child’s day — brushing before school, the smell of the classroom, fresh breath at break.
- Framed it as a habit rather than a product — the child who starts the day right, not the tube that does it.
- Kept one ask on every piece, and only one: order now.
The Work
Five pieces · selected from the feed





11 · Built by me
Zedé Glow
This one is mine. A skincare brand I own. Nobody briefs me and nobody signs off on me — every decision on this page is one I made and paid for.
Brand owner · Positioning · Content plan · Copywriting · Design · AI-generated UGC · Paid ads · The Shopify store
Where it started
I didn’t want to learn the rest of it from a brief.
I wanted to learn it by owning it.
I had spent years deciding what brands should say. The parts I had never touched were the ones that decide whether a brand survives — the shop, the ad account, the price of one click. So I built one of my own to find out.
It started as a way to learn. It ended up as a brand that ships.
How it was built
Five moves,
in this order.
Nothing was outsourced, and nothing happened at once. This is the order it was built in.
-
01
The pages
Name, look, bio, handle. The brand had to exist somewhere before it existed as a shop, so an audience was waiting when there was something to buy.
-
02
The content
Every post written and designed on one rule: one concern, one product, one outcome — in the Egyptian Arabic a woman actually uses about her own skin.
-
03
The ads
Writing for an audience that never asked to see you is a different craft: one second, a hook that carries the offer, and a number attached to every weak line. This is where I learned what content costs.
-
04
The store
I designed the Shopify store with AI tooling instead of a developer, laid out around the content plan rather than the product list — concerns, bundles and offers in the order the feed had already taught people to want them.
-
05
The launch
zedeglow.com opened on content I wrote, in a shop I built, to an audience I brought. A relaunch is in progress.
What owning it changed
Once you write the caption, buy the traffic and build the page it lands on,
you stop treating them as three jobs.
I now ask what a piece of content is supposed to cost before I ask what it is supposed to say.
The shop
- Wrote and designed every post — the one place on this site where the layout is mine as well as the words.
- Made the UGC videos with AI instead of a shoot, so a small brand could still show a face, a hand and a routine.
- Designed the Shopify store and ran the offers, the bundles and the concern pages off the same content plan.
Brand owner · content · design · AI video · ads · the store
The Work
Five pieces · selected from the feed





Contact
Get in
touch.
Hiring for a senior content role, or bringing a brand with a problem? Tell me the brief — I’ll come back with the angle first.
See the work againBased in Cairo, Egypt Working across Egypt and the Gulf






































