The Original "Mad Man", David Ogilvy Gives You 10 Tips for Better Writing

I just came across this blog post at Brain Pickings that features a quick bit of golden wisdom from the Godfather of modern advertising, David Ogilvy, whose personality and legendary ad firm, Ogilvy and Mather, are the inspiration for the wildly popular tv show “Mad Men”.

More than any other skill you learn in school, writing can do more to get you further and faster in just about any endeavor in life.  I started with school reports, then company memos, this blog and ultimately wrote two books and each has lead to greater professional opportunities and clarity of thinking.  (In fact, one of the reason’s my wife said she married me was because I helped her write papers for college and she always got a good grade… Yes, writing can even help you get “lucky”!)

So without fully realizing it, I’ve been applying much of Mr. Ogilvy’s timeless advice on writing for years now, but still have more apply.

Know this: writing is simply thinking and talking on paper…  

In essence, transferring an idea from your head into someone else’s…in a word: communicating.  And the clearer the writing the clearer the transfer, the more successfully your ideas, stories and concepts will be planted in the minds of your audience,  the more likely you are to get the outcomes you desire, whether that’s building suspense in a scene, convincing an investor or just writing a log line for your film.

Read and learn from a master of the craft of communicating the late great David Ogilvy…

10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy

*Special thanks to “Rev.” Al Houston of Fiat Lux Productions for the share.