Before
Email draftA long executive update buries a key decision among background and next steps.
The reader has to search for the point, the impact, and the next step.
A new book from the authors of Smart Brevity
Simplify: Do 50% More With 50% Less. A USA TODAY bestseller, out now from Penguin Random House.
Confront the complexity. Delete what drains you. Amplify what makes you best.
★ The Smart Brevity Standard
Transform how your organization communicates
Smart Brevity is Axios' proven approach to make comms more concise and clear in a noisy world.
Real client edits
Before Smart Brevity: community update
The community cleanup event was a resounding success, thanks to the enthusiastic participation of our colleagues at The FlipTide Foundation and San Diego community members. The event helped clean up our local environment and brought the FlipTide family together, strengthening our commitment to sustainability and community engagement. Over 100 participants joined the cleanup, including 23 of our own teammates, and the Foundation plans to organize more community initiatives like this. Keep an eye out for upcoming events and opportunities to make a positive impact.
After Smart Brevity: community update
The community cleanup event was a resounding success, thanks to the enthusiastic participation of our colleagues at The FlipTide Foundation and San Diego community members.
•Why it matters: The event helped clean up our local environment and brought the FlipTide family together, strengthening our commitment to sustainability and community engagement.
🏫By the numbers: Over 100 participants joined the cleanup, including 23 of our own teammates.
What's next: The Foundation plans to organize more community initiatives like this. Keep an eye out for upcoming events and opportunities to make a positive impact.
Why it matters
Leaders are drowning in information and tuning out
"Never have humans talked, tweeted or texted more words, and found it more difficult to be heard."
Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Axios, TED Talk
60 seconds or less
is how long workers spend scanning any given communication
(Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2025)
$62.4M is the drop
in productivity large orgs see every year as a result of poor communication
(The Holmes Report)
40 points is the gap
in growth, retention, and reputation between orgs that do and don't invest in communication
(Axios HQ State of Workplace Comms, 2026)
What we offer
Learn the method
Training
Make Smart Brevity the standard your org runs on.
Get to know why 93% of our training clients say their training was effective.
Launch new communications
Consulting
Adopt Smart Brevity in your organization's most important communications for your most valued audiences.
Scale the standard
AI Services
Custom agents, training and coaching to embed a Smart Brevity perspective and editorial judgment within AI workflows.
What changes
Smart Brevity is a science-backed method from Axios to think sharper, communicate clearly, and save yourself and others time.
What is Smart Brevity?01
Put the audience first
Who we're writing for is the first and most important question we ask. Every decision we make is in service to the audience.
02
Be worthy of their time
Every sentence, every detail has to have value. No waste. The result is communication that earns readers' trust.
03
Structure for clarity
We lead with the two most critical details the reader is searching for: what is this and why should they care, helping a communication demonstrate its value at a glance.
04
Bring human judgment
AI can generate mountains of text, but it can't decide what your audience needs to know. Smart Brevity builds the judgment that AI can't replicate: what to say, what not to say, and what matters most.
Here's what it looks like…
Email
After Smart Brevity
1 big thing: The decision employees need first.
Why it matters: The audience can act without reading a wall of context.
→Two decisions, clearly named
→One owner for each next step
→A deadline employees can find
Smart Brevity case studiesHow the world's top companies
How the world's top companies
stay aligned, engaged, and efficient
bp6,000employees trained across 37 countries
How bp transformed global comms with a team of Smart Brevity “Ninjas”
Read the case study J&J MedTech70,000employees relied on our newsletter for change managementHow Johnson & Johnson united six medical technology brands under one name
Read the case study CSX4xorganic subscriber growth in three monthsCSX transforms employee communications
Read the case studyThe books
Read all about it
Smart Brevity FAQs
The essentials, in one place
What is the Smart Brevity method?
Smart Brevity is a communication methodology used to communicate what matters to staff and stakeholders more effectively. It uses data to help you style and format information to be smart and impactful so individuals can easily absorb and act on what they read.
Who wrote Smart Brevity?
Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less is a business book written by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz. It teaches readers how to understand and apply Axios' famous Smart Brevity style that makes communications smart, brief, and clear.
Get in touch with us
Let's figure out what the right engagement looks like for your organization.