“Banking was in his blood, but not in his heart, coming from three generations of bankers,” Ms. Bell said in an email. “In his heart, he always wanted to be a writer. After college graduation, he decided advertising would be a creative profession where he would be able to write.”
In 1971, at age 25, Mr. Bell sold a screenplay called “Screamathon” to the producers Joel B. Michaels and Garth Drabinsky.
The following year, he was recruited by the Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency, where he became vice president and creative director. He joined Leo Burnett U.S.A. in Chicago in 1982 as a creative director and was named president and chief creative officer in 1986, at age 40.
After joining Young & Rubicam, he and his collaborators won seven Clio advertising awards, three Cannes Gold Lions awards in creativity and the Cannes Lions Grand Prix award.
He retired in 2000 and published his first novel, “Hawke,” in 2003.
In 2011, Mr. Bell, who lived in Greenwich, Conn., was named a visiting scholar at Cambridge University’s department of political science and international studies and a writer in residence at Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge.
His marriage in 1978 to Evelyn Byrd Lorentzen, a photographer, ended in divorce, as did his subsequent marriages to Page Lee Hufty, an artist, and Lucinda Watson, an author. He is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Evelyn Byrd Fay, an actress and model known as Byrdie Bell; and his sister, Sally Bell Powell.
