Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and philosopher was supposedly the first to coin the famous phrase about brevity - often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain - which on translation reads:

“I have made this longer than usual, because I have not had time to make it shorter.”

In advertising, brevity is encouraged. How words would work on a billboard, was usually the test to pass.

But Pascal, or Twain, would have been complete amateurs on the economy of language when compared with legendary director Tony Kaye, famous for his advertising work and then feature films.

Once, when delivering a speech at the Cannes Advertising Festival, Kaye, who was not shy of voicing an opinion, was asked to address the largely creative audience on the topic of ‘how to get the best result from a director.’

The crowd on the Croisette waited with bated breath, eager for some controversy from the man who once described himself as ‘the greatest English director since Hitchcock,’ but obviously also keen to hear his answer to the question.

They didn’t have to wait long.

Hating to disappoint, Kaye approached the microphone, surveyed the hushed throng, then delivered his thought.

“Trust.” he said clearly into the mic, letting it sink in for a beat, before turning and walking back the way he came.

Genius. On so many fronts.

Of course when you get paid by the word, for say, writing a magazine article, short is to be avoided like the plague.

Since a bow can never have too many strings, I’ve been writing and snapping pics for local magazine Bay Buzz. The latest article is on remote work. I do a bit of that myself, so the words, all two thousand of them give or take, came relatively quickly.

I just ran out of time to write fewer of them.