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What It Takes to Succeed in Writing According to Ogilvy

Checklist — Writers on Writing 2 (David Ogilvy)

Six writers on the craft of writing and their writing processes: From reading the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing three times to the necessity of ‘being crazy dumbsaint of the mind’, they reveal the secrets of writing creatively and effectively. In this second edition, David Ogilvy shares some actionable tips on writing.

These are proven strategies from the masters who have as well listed concisely how we can write better and improve our writing style. This is the second piece in the series titled Checklists — Writers on Writing Process and we have David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, today.

About the Writer

10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy
Bottom Line
Read Books by David Ogilvy

Introduction

If you are reading this, chances are that you prefer, or it is okay for you, to read tips and techniques or at least you are open to the ideas shared by others on how to do things. And this is for writing in our context. Some people disfavour others telling them how to do things, even more so, when it comes to a creative activity like writing. Well, whatever floats one’s boat!

Before we proceed, we can refer to John Steinbeck in the last post regarding writing tips and techniques. He said: ‘If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.’

Still the practice of taking inspiration and using prompts is widespread in online media. There is also a reason why it is popular.

When it comes to a specific kind of writing like those for SEO and marketing, writing becomes a bit rigid for we have to do it according to certain parameters. Some of these include writing with limited word counts, using keywords that are explored and researched, and incorporating technical components like that of meta-data and meta-tags. For this style of writing, tips and techniques for writing effectively, inspirations, and prompts are not only handy but also a prerequisite.

Clear Content and Copy

Quite often, you will also chance upon an aphorism that content is king. I find it very mechanical. The only good thing about content writing, to me, is the fact that many of my students can take it up for their mandatory internship. Out of the many options, content writing jobs are the easiest to find because everyone knows its importance and is going for it.

Check these lines from an article on HubSpot:

Content marketing has been proven to deliver resounding success. As one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing your brand presence, and driving sales, content marketing is a mission-critical growth method for most businesses. According to the State of Inbound report, content creation is a top priority for 53% of marketers. Moreover, on average, content marketing accounts for 29% of B2B marketing budgets.
Source: 10 Benefits of Consistent, High-Quality Content Marketing, by Rebecca Riserbato, HubSpot

Nowadays, a business cannot afford to not have a blog. Google is the first thing people turn to, when they want anything: from finding the distance between the electron and neutron to the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The answers are at our fingertips, with much thanks to Google, which crawls and indexes thousands of websites every second 24×7.

Accordingly, it displays the results and out of the several factors that determine the ranking, freshness of the content is critical. This means you need to update posts regularly on your blog/website. And hence, the necessity of content writing, content marketing, and blogging.

Likewise, when people want to buy beer mugs, watch a new Netflix series, go for a road trip, compare two products, the first place they go to is Google. Marketeers, promoters and businesses vie for the first page on search engines. Do a scan on Google Trends and you will find all the trending keywords.

My point is: Ogilvy’s tips will come in very handy for content writing and copy writing — two things that are indispensable in promotion and advertising. If you can incorporate a few points, you can also enhance the clarity of your writing.

Of course, like it has been mentioned, you can apply his methods to different kinds of writing, particularly in creative writing, or wherever you see they fit.

Footnote: Now and then, it is a sort of taking in fresh air to read about other’s way of doing things. It is even better and more credible when these instructors are influential writers or personalities. So, I have six well-known personalities: five from the world of literature and one from that of advertising, who have come up with a list of proven strategies to refine the craft of writing.

About the Writer
David Ogilvy (1911–1999) is the father of advertising. His Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) is used as a primer in the industry and Ogilvy on Advertising (1983) is a guide that you can find on every bookshelf of the experts in advertising, promotion and marketing. A lot has changed after his career peak, with the most prominent being the media itself, as Internet has transformed the landscape. However, his ideas are as relevant and fresh as when they were conceptualised and written.

10 Tips on Writing from David Ogilvy

Bottom Line

If you want to write more and better, check out the series on Checklists — Writers on Writing Process.

We can broadly categorise writing into four types: (i) Narrative writing, (ii) descriptive writing, (iii) persuasive writing, and (iv) expository writing. The 10 tips on writing from David Ogilvy is best suited for persuasive writing.

Does it fit only for this type? Nope. Let’s say you are writing a story, which will come under the category of narrative style. Then, you can ‘write the way you talk. Naturally’. You can also ‘use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs’ for clarity and to tell an engaging story. You know where I’m going to? Well, you can use these tips and techniques in different types of writing. That’s also what I meant when I say that you can apply the methods wherever you see they fit.

Write more, write better!