Creativity Needs More Boredom

At Cannes Lions this year, Mondelez International’s senior director Josep Hernandez advised brands to review their agency model and check that they’re not strangling fees. He claimed that pushing down fees could impede an agency’s innovation ability.

Echoing a recent report - that revealed only 46 per cent of companies were actively investing in developing digital skills, while 87 per cent admitted to the benefits of going digital - agencies clearly have an important role in helping organisations achieve their digital goals, with over half of respondents in the report bolstering digital capabilities through training, recruitment and partnership.

With this in mind, I applaud Hernandez for standing up for agency fees - especially at a time when margins are squeezed and the work agencies do come under ever-increasing scrutiny to demonstrate proven value. The Marketing Agencies Association (MAA) drew attention to this when almost three-quarters of US clients were questioning whether traditional agencies can change their business model to meet their needs – leading 62 percent to consider taking creativity and digital in-house.

But I applaud it more vociferously because of the simple fact that he wasn’t just protecting profits, he was protecting our time.

Our industry relies upon billable hours to survive, with time accounted for in terms of output and tangible value. Agencies have always competed by dropping project costs and undercutting rivals. There is a sense of noble dignity in believing our work is based on creative merit and effectiveness, but more often than not, it comes down to money.

Or rather, it did. The landscape has changed. In the last decade – one peppered with disruptors like Facebook, AirBnB and Tinder: our world has changed. The bankruptcy of Kodak in January 2012 showed that companies who ignore digital breakthroughs court their own destruction. We exist in a harsh reality where agencies promise innovative solutions whilst they are forced to cut team sizes and project lengths in order to stay competitive.

We are stuck in a cycle of immediate deliverables and short-term gains, campaigns which – no matter how effective they are at boosting ROI or raising awareness – are disposable.

Shrunken teams and shorter timelines also mean we’re working longer hours than ever before. As the Wall Street Journal wrote in May this year, the 40 hour work week is long gone.

The viral article Why talented creatives are leaving your shitty agency is uncomfortably true, and the issues it raises don’t just affect creatives. We’re all facing these issues because – at heart - agencies have been slow to innovate. The focus on billability and short-term gains means we’ve sacrificed the possibility of truly great innovation for doing what we know. We have focussed on the Benjamins, burying our heads in the sand until we saw client appetite for innovation.

The blunt truth is that although clients may be risk-averse and reactive, the creative industry needs to embrace the risks that innovation brings if it wants to truly drive change.

This means embracing the notion that the old way of working isn’t working anymore. To move forward and retain talent we need to stop relying on our clients to define time and space for us and give ourselves some space to think.

For true innovation to happen, we need a space free from distractions and impending deadlines. We need the chance to daydream and feel… a bit bored.

Bear with me.

Boredom creates the space needed to let our minds drift and reframe problems. Dr Wijnand van Tilburg, a psychologist from the University of Southampton, argues that although boredom can feel unpleasant, it’s actually a motivating force.

“Boredom fulfills an important function: boredom makes people keen to engage in activities that they find more meaningful than those at hand,” says van Tilburg. “Essentially, the unpleasant sensation of boredom ‘reminds’ people that there are more important matters to attend to than those at hand.”

Pennsylvania State University professor and assistant Karen Gaspar and Brianna Middlewood looked into this phenomenon and found that bored participants outperformed relaxed, elated or distressed participants on the same creativity tests.

Perhaps the most innovative thing agencies can do right now is admit the need to change; to stop reacting and start protecting the time and space of their people; and to put some faith in the notion that an unbilled hour isn’t necessarily an unproductive one. Pure, undiluted autonomy can produce amazing things for businesses - and these amazing things might bring new ways to deliver value and meaning to clients.