Professor Mario Vafeas discusses his recent, open access paper Boredom in the Creative Studio published in the Journal of Advertising
For several years, I have been conducting research in the creative industries. Initially, this started as an investigation of factors influencing the quality of client-agency relationships. More recently, I have been exploring the ‘dark side’ of long-term business relationships. Besides the potential for complacency, opportunism, and inertia, I was fascinated to uncover the potential negative impact that boredom can have on creative personnel and, consequently, on the client-agency relationship.
Despite being a common phenomenon in the workplace, boredom is poorly understood. This could be because it is less visible, and considered less harmful, than other negative emotions such as anxiety and stress. And yet, being bored can lead to reduced task performance and – when it becomes chronic rather than transient – negative wellbeing. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that creative personality types are more prone to boredom than others.
To increase understanding of the causes and consequences of boredom in a creative environment, I conducted 32 one-to-one interviews with senior and junior creatives from a variety of marketing communications agencies in the UK. I used Control-Value Theory (CVT) – a theory that was developed in the education sector – to frame the research. CVT proposes that an individual’s motivation and behaviour are influenced by positive or negative emotions. These emotions result from an individual’s subjective assessment of personal control over, and perceived value of, activities.
Control appraisals
The research findings showed that three factors affected control appraisals. The first was poor quality briefing by the client which led creatives to conclude that they had insufficient control over the job to produce an effective outcome:
” We frequently find that clients can’t articulate what they want. You can’t solve a problem when you don’t know what it is you are meant to be solving. You end up with totally bored and disengaged creatives.” (Creative director)
The second was a lack of task autonomy. When a brief is too constraining or too prescriptive, it reduces a creative’s ownership and desire to invest in the task:
“Sometimes the decisions are made for you. You’re spoon fed everything. If you’re not given the freedom to be creative, you get bored. The enthusiasm goes and your heart’s not in it.” (Creative director)
The third was poor quality performance feedback from the client. This included infrequent feedback and a lack of transparency:
“You’re far more likely to put effort into impressing the client if you feel like your work is appreciated. When they say nothing, you think ‘why bother?’ ” (Graphic designer)
“Boredom is a consequence of being told ‘that’s not good enough’ but not being told why. The desire to please dissipates.” (Creative director)
Value appraisals
The findings showed that two factors affected value appraisals.
The first was task challenge.
There were two elements to this: repetitive work and identity threat. Repetitive work is underchallenging. It has no intrinsic value (there is a lack of interest) and no extrinsic value (it will do nothing to enhance the career of the creative):
“When creatives are asked to dedicate their lives to one client and essentially one brief, year after year, they just regurgitate the same stuff, and it gets very boring.” (Art director)
Ironically, these are often the jobs that generate substantial revenue. As one creative director put it: “these are the meat and potato jobs that keep the agency going.” Related to being underchallenged is identity threat. Several participants identified two personality types, variously called ‘climbers and campers’ or ‘hunters and farmers’. The climbers/hunters have a strong sense of identity and a clear idea of the type of work that nurtures their identity. They see no value in under-challenging work and consider it a threat to their identity:
“The climbers know what they want in life. They love creating big ideas. The mundane is for someone else. Give them the wrong job and you can see their boredom, their physical agitation.“ (Creative director)
The second factor which influences value appraisals is task meaningfulness.
Where there is a poor fit between the person and the task, there is the potential for boredom:
“I did some work for an adoption agency. I had a real desire to produce a great outcome. On the other hand, when it’s something I can’t connect with, like we had a client in the defence sector, I soon get bored.” (Graphic designer)
Interestingly, a good relationship with the client has a mitigating effect on mundane work and boredom:
“If there’s a good relationship with the client then, no matter how mundane the work, or how many times they ask you to move a comma and then, an hour later, move it back again, you’ll do it because you love the client.” (Graphic designer)
Regarding the interaction between control and value appraisals, the findings suggest that, even when levels of task control are high, if the value appraisal is low, boredom will still occur:
“There are some projects where we already know the coordinates. We’ve worked on it for the last five years. We know the brand, what works, and what the client likes. There’s no challenge. We become stale, bored, and the result is monotone.” (Creative director)
The consequences of boredom have both low and high activation characteristics. The former had an impact on intensity and duration of effort. Besides reduced effort, some will seek distraction from boredom by, for example, listening to a podcast while working. Not only can this diversion of cognitive resources result in error, it can also have a negative impact on organisational culture:
“They don their headphones at nine am and take them off at five pm. There’s no point them being in the studio. The studio feeds off banter and noise. It stimulates the creative mind and creates a dynamic in the studio. People who disconnect do nothing to build a vibrant and creative environment.” (Creative director)
A more harmful consequence is antisocial behaviour. This is visible in the ‘climbers/hunters’ whose identity is threatened:
“Ask them to do the wrong job and their boredom and frustration becomes very evident. It cascades down to the juniors in the team. It’s pervasive and you can feel productivity across the team begin to slide.” (Creative director)
Mitigating boredom
With regard to mitigating against the negative impact of boredom, job rotation can be a solution, but where this is impractical, re-framing an old problem to challenge the perception that problem boundaries and solutions are pre-determined can help. Highlighting the prosocial contribution of a task can increase value perceptions. Furthermore, peer appreciation leads to positive affect, enhancing an individual’s motivation.
Although clients might argue that the emotions of the creative team are not their concern, they should be cognizant of the impact their actions have on creative output. A high-quality brief, creative autonomy, and regular and transparent feedback will enhance a creative’s sense of control over a job. The power of relational goodwill to counteract boredom and maintain engagement, even during mundane tasks, is striking. It underlines the importance of nurturing the client-agency relationship for mutual benefit.