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MY STORY

Melinda Ortley started her career as a brand photographer. On shoots, she was brainstorming her clients' strategy just as much as taking photographs. After one too many unprompted strategy sessions on set, a client finally said: just come work for us.

The results confirmed what she'd already suspected: empathetic messaging was the secret ingredient in every campaign that actually performed. Not the budget. Not the platform. The human truth underneath the words. She spent years obsessively studying copywriting, sales psychology, and story science — every book, every podcast, every framework she could find. So thoroughly that her grown children can now pick out good copy from bad, having been involuntary students during years of carpool conversations.

Some brands tripled their revenue within a year. Some launched businesses that crossed the million dollar mark. Some sold at top value. When she wrote about experiences, they started selling out. A construction company repositioned from a contractor to a home builder with a story and grew from $1 million to $3 million. A brand she positioned from scratch became nationally recognized with over 80,000 social media followers. The positioning was simple and completely original: objects carry memory and human story. No one in the antiques market was saying it. That's what propelled them. The copy she wrote was so distinctive it was imitated by competing agencies across Dallas.

She has kept her writing and camera work sharp ever since, as a freelance journalist and nationally published food and interior photographer. Her work has appeared in Local Palate, Eater Dallas, Edible DFW, PaperCity Round Top, and Qantas Airlines Travel Magazine.

Photography & published writing: melindaortley.com