Meet Our Content King: David Haggett, Exotic Animal Whisperer
Where Are You Located?
I currently live in Malaysia but share my time between here and the UK. I’m originally from England, I left there over twenty years ago for what was meant to be a brief posting to Singapore. This was to work for the overseas branch of the world’s largest banking software supplier whose head office is UK-based.
What Do You Do at Airlink Marketing?
A large amount of my time is spent in research, which is then used to create content that helps hospitality clients reach their clientele. I am fascinated by the speed at which the marketing industry is changing with the evolution of social media.
My years of travel and experience in marketing enable me to write articles that are relevant and interesting to a broad range of readers. That relevance is key to increasing traffic and conversion rates.
What Brought You To Malaysia?
My ‘brief’ stay in Singapore lasted seven years, and gave me the chance to explore South East Asia. I was later asked to move to Kuala Lumpur to set up a new sales office. I spent three years there and continued exploring the region, including the Indian sub-continent.
During an economic slump in Malaysia, I relocated to South Africa to assist with sales and customer service. This afforded me a wonderful opportunity to get to know a little about the African continent and its people. After a short time I was promoted to General Manager of African operations. Due to ongoing cooperation with our Middle East office, the prospects for travel were further expanded.
After spending time as a freelance consultant operating from South Africa, an invitation from a green energy start-up company took me to a small town near Guadalajara, Mexico, where I spent three months. Needless to say, I took every opportunity to travel around that part of Mexico. With a work visa for Mexico looking uncertain, I obtained a 10 year MM2H visa for Malaysia and returned to Kuala Lumpur.
I became involved with sales and marketing before I moved to Singapore. My success at sales-related activity was, in part, the reason I received the various overseas postings. Working for a large company equipped me through extensive training and exposed me to a wide variety of situations in different locations, but in a structured environment.
This also saw the start of years of business travel, which at one point meant I was carrying seven frequent flyer cards, three gold and two silver. One year involved so much travel I was classified as a non-resident for tax purposes!
I was still in South Africa when I left the banking software industry to start a consultancy business. Companies sought my expertise to help them market and sell their products and services into various African countries. Assisting these companies gave me a broader perspective on marketing, and a freer hand than was possible in a corporate environment to develop exciting strategies.
During this period I bought a game farm which accepted a small number of paying guests, so I acquired first-hand insight into the hospitality industry. With repeat stays in numerous hotels, it was inevitable that I got to know some of their management, which enhanced that knowledge. I developed training courses on sales and customer care, which I most recently delivered to a hotel in Malaysia.
As part of my corporate and consultancy responsibilities, I have written hundreds of business proposals, legal agreements, sales reports, proposals and marketing documents. One marketing plan required that I write articles for financial magazines. After that campaign finished I continued to create articles for magazines and journals, which was the start of my freelance writing career. I have also written several novels and three non-fiction books.
Where Do You Get Your Creative Inspiration From?
The inventiveness of the human mind, new technologies, natural wonders, wildlife and more… there simply isn’t enough time to put ideas on paper!
How Do You Work Across Borders?
With technology I find there are no borders, only time differences. On any one day I might be working with clients in the US and in Australia. Although I use cloud services for backups, because some of the places I travel to do not enjoy a reliable internet connection, I confess to always carrying a hard backup.
Having lived and worked in so many countries, I have gained an understanding and appreciation of the diversity and commonalities of different cultures.
Do You Have Travel Plans Soon?
Soon I am flying to the UK for a few weeks to visit family and I will continue working across borders while I am there. After that? Possibly Mexico in early 2017.
Anything Else You’d Like To Share?
In South Africa, I owned a 250 acre game farm, complete with kudu, impala, blue wildebeest, and a host of other animals. But it lacked giraffe, so I bought a pair at auction. On a different occasion, I found an abandoned blesbok baby on the farm which was then hand reared. Although returned to the wild, she would come when called and occasionally made a nuisance of herself in the kitchen.
I started breeding chameleons as a hobby in South Africa but it soon became the biggest commercial chameleon breeding business in the country and interrupted my consultancy business!
I have had a lifelong interest in wildlife, especially Lepidoptera and other insects. In Malaysia, I discovered a new species of butterfly and ‘rediscovered’ a species that had only been seen once before. During the time of the Iran/Iraq war I was held at gunpoint by the Kuwaiti army on two separate occasions while looking for insects in the desert but that’s a different story.
