Ogilvy Smather

If there's one thing that patrolling the vast and serpentine Misinformation Superhighway has taught Yours Truly Dooley, it's that each of us has a story to tell — or possibly sell — no matter how poorly written and rife with grammatical atrocities it may be. And what, might you ask, does a uniformed, online police official know about writing? Well, what does a bloody English shirt maker know about writing? Such was the question that I dared to pose long ago to legendary Hathaway® man turned adman David Ogilvy (pictured), and one that he answered forthrightly in our chance meeting in a public house latrine: “People who think well, write well, Dooley,” David began, as we stood astride our porcelain stations. “Woolly-minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly bully speeches,” he continued. “Write the way you talk. Naturally, using short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. Never use jargon like reconceptualize, demassification and attitudinally, Constable. They are the hallmarks of a pretentious bumhole. Never write more than two pages on any subject, nor send an Internet missive on the day you write it. Read it aloud the next morning — and then edit it. If ‘tis something important, get a station house colleague to improve it. Be crystalline clear what you want the recipient to do. If you want ACTION, don’t write. Tell the buggerer what you want. Put the cuffs on him if he won’t oblige.” And with that, Master David Ogilvy, ballyhooed chieftain of Ogilvy Benson & Hedges & Mather — the “Father of Advertising,” later the “Grandfather of Advertising” and later still, the “Great Great Grandfather Once-Removed, Which Is To Say, Deceased, of Advertising” — tucked his modest male appendage into his trousers and was gone.