Column ghostwriting
ACV Auctions is a virtual wholesale auction platform that’s changing the way auto dealers buy and sell used vehicles. I was invited to ghostwrite a guest column in Auto Dealer Today Magazine on behalf of Doug Hadden, ACV’s new vice president of field operations. Doug is a well-known 40-year veteran of the used car business and a frequent keynote speaker at industry events. If it didn’t sound like Doug wrote a column with his name on it, readers would know – a fact he drove home at our first and only meeting, adding that the last two people who tried to capture his voice failed miserably.
I don’t know anything about used cars. I didn’t know Doug well enough to guess how he would say much of anything; I met with him for less than an hour, and half that time was spent talking about the company rather than the specific topic. So I did my homework. I sat down with two ACV Auctions clients (used car dealers) and picked their brains about the column’s topic and their day-to-day realities in car sales and auctions. I scoured the web for videos of Doug’s past keynote speeches and samples of other pieces he had written himself to study his turns of phrase, language choices, and the way he used examples and metaphors to drive his points home. And it worked. Doug’s edits were minor, the column ran with his byline, and that earned background into this super-specific industry led to more online content work for ACV.
