Reverse-engineering your writing w/ Kim Whitler

Today’s guest is Kim Whitler.

Kim is a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

She was my professor at Darden and in my second year I was her research assistant.

One thing I’ve always appreciated about her was her practical advice. One of her strengths was bridging the gap between theory and practice.

She came into academia with a wealth of experience. She spent most of her career at Procter & Gamble, served as the general manager of the Breakfast Division for Aurora Foods, and was the CMO of David’s Bridal, the country’s leading bridal apparel retailer.

In addition to being a prolific academic researcher, she publishes regularly in Forbes. I’ve included some recommended articles at the end of this post.

In this episode, I talk to her about writing for different audiences, P&G’s writing culture, and dissecting writing.

Here are my top three take aways from my interview with her:

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Reverse-engineering writing:

When Kim started writing for academic journals and then mainstream publications like Forbes, she learned how to write in those distinct styles by mirroring the structure and tone of those articles.

She approached her writing by reverse-engineering what worked in those various publications. This is similar to this idea of ‘reading like a writer’, one of the core concepts that my wife Caroline talked about on her episode.

Once you discover the patterns or structures of writing you admire, you can add those techniques to your own writing.

Adapting to the audience’s preferred style:

It’s basic marketing, as Kim puts it. How you talk to one audience is not how you would talk to another audience. Yet we tend to have one approach – our style, what we know, what we like – and want people get on board with that.

Instead, to be able to reach and engage with a particular audience, you need to adapt to their preferred style.

Representing your thinking and your logic:

One of the parts I enjoyed hearing about was how P&G revered writing. As Kim shared about her time there, P&G were aware that stylized PowerPoint decks could influence decision making. They stripped out the noise of formatting or visuals from their One Page Reco so that the ideas would be the star of the show.

The logic needs to be there, plain enough to grasp in that small format.

Style cannot cover for faulty logic or no logic.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Check out these articles to learn more about Kim’s research:

* The CMO Role is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It.

* Working At These Companies May Be Your Stepping Stone To CEO

* New Research Indicates CEO Perception Of CMO Performance Is Improving

Are there writers or journalists that you frequently draw inspiration from?