Boredom isn’t a bug—it’s a feature. Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks explains why boredom unlocks creativity, activates a powerful brain network, and might even protect you from depression. Learn how the mind wanders—and why that’s a very good thing.
We used to have brainstorms. Now we have prompt storms. A planner walks in with five slides generated by ChatGPT. The copy sounds clever, the insights look solid, and the pitch feels smooth.
And yet, something’s missing.
You can’t quite name it. But you feel it: no tension, no edge, no revelation.
AI generates with confidence, speed, and fluency. But fluency is not insight. Style is not surprise.
The result? Teams start accepting the first answer. They stop asking better questions. They stop thinking in the messy, nonlinear, soul-breaking way that true strategy demands.
In the age of AI, the most dangerous temptation is this: To feel like you’re being productive while you’re actually avoiding thinking.
Strategy was never about speed. It was about discomfort. Contradiction. Holding multiple truths. Thinking strategically means staying longer with the problem, not jumping to solutions.
But AI is built for immediacy. It satisfies before it provokes. And that’s the danger: it can trick an entire agency into believing it’s being smart—when it’s just being fast.
AI Isn’t the Enemy. Passivity Is.
Let’s be clear: AI is not a villain. It’s a brilliant assistant. A stimulator of thought. The problem begins when we replace thinking with prompting instead of interrogating the outputs.
Great strategists won’t be the ones who prompt best. They’ll be the ones who:
Pause after the first answer
Spot the lie inside the convenience
Use AI as a sparring partner, not a surrogate mind
We don’t need better prompts. We need better questions.
Reclaiming Strategic Intelligence
The sharpest minds in the room used to be the ones who paid attention. Who read between the trends. Who felt what was missing in the noise.
That role is still sacred. But only if we protect the muscle it relies on: critical thought. Pattern recognition. Surprise. Doubt. Curiosity.
If you let a machine decide how you see, you will forget how to see at all.
Strategy is not a slide deck. It’s a stance.
It’s the act of staring into chaos and naming what matters.
We can let AI handle the heavy lifting —but only if we still carry the weight of interpretation.
Otherwise, the industry will be filled with fluent nonsense while true insight quietly disappears.
And what’s left then?
Slogans without soul. Campaigns without culture. Minds without friction.
Don’t let the machine think for you. Use it to go deeper. Use it to go stranger. But never stop thinking.
Every June, the high priests of creativity descend on Cannes to baptize consumerism in gold.
We wear the right linen. Whisper the right buzzwords. Applaud campaigns that make the world feel better —while keeping the system exactly as it is.
But maybe the question isn’t what wins. Maybe it’s why we’re still awarding anything that worships the market above all.
Capitalism Makes a Poor Muse
We’ve mistaken reach for relevance. Profit for purpose. Cleverness for conscience.
Advertising was never neutral— But now we award its best lies, its cleanest distractions, its highest-performing manipulations.
If the work doesn’t question the system— It upholds it.
And we celebrate that? We dress it in titanium?
Glass is the Only Lion That Breaks the Spell
The Glass Lion doesn’t care about ROI. It asks: Who was empowered? What inequality was challenged? Did this leave behind justice—not just impressions?
And here’s what’s radical:
The work doesn’t have to sell.
It has to liberate.
It has to leave behind proof of dignity restored.
That’s not capitalism. That’s creative resistance, its the only award that really matters in a post pandemic world full of wars, volatility, and injustice! This one should be the one you always aim for as an agency!
Everything Else Is Complicity in Couture
Let’s tell the truth:
Most Cannes Lions go to work that pleases the system. They flatter the world as it is. They use rebellion as branding—but stay loyal to power.
We give Gold to campaigns that simulate empathy without ever shifting structures, without even changing culture, without even changing the world better.
They don’t challenge capitalism. They accessorize it.
Time to Flip the Script
What if Cannes wasn’t built around categories that serve the market— but around ones that dismantle its harm?
What if we would expand the notion of Glass into every category—not as a side dish, but the main course.
Because a Lion that doesn’t protect the people?
It’s just a logo with teeth.
An Award Show or an Autopsy?
Cannes faces a choice.
It can continue to be an arena for marketing’s most exquisite distractions— or it can become a stage for work that actually moves us forward.
But that means one thing:
Decenter capitalism. Center impact. Make awards serve justice, not just sales.
Not all creativity deserves applause. Not all lions deserve gold.
Until every award is held to the standard of the Glass, we’re just clapping for the architects of decline of our future!
If your creativity feeds the system and not the people— you don’t deserve a Lion.
Budgets are holding. Tools are multiplying. Content is everywhere. And yet—campaigns are feeling flatter, safer, forgettable. We’re showing up more. But saying less.
51% of brands say their insights are too weak to fuel bold creativity.
The very oxygen of original work—insight—is running low.
Creativity Isn’t Dead. It’s Malnourished.
The study surveyed 1,000 marketers and creatives globally. Only 13% said they were “very good” at developing high-quality insights. And over half admitted their strategic thinking wasn’t strong enough to support brave ideas.
This isn’t about copy or color palettes. It’s about the starting point—the thinking beneath the campaign.
When that’s soft, everything collapses. We don’t create culture. We decorate it.
The Great Disconnect
Here’s where it gets messier.
26% of brands believe they’re good at generating insights. Only 10% of agencies agree.
That’s not a disagreement. That’s a misalignment. And it shows up in the work: campaigns with zero tension, zero edge, and zero memory.
It’s a quiet crisis—because no one gets fired for playing it safe. But no one gets remembered for it, either.
Why This Is Happening
The report points to three key reasons:
No one agrees on what a “good insight” actually is. 29% of agencies said the core problem is not knowing how to define it.
Insight development isn’t prioritized. It’s not funded. It’s not briefed. It’s not protected. (But production timelines? Always urgent.)
Brands struggle to react to culture in real time. 57% said they can’t respond fast enough to cultural moments. Insight, by the time it surfaces, is already stale.
As one respondent put it:
“Capturing cultural moments requires real-time data and courage. But fear of failure gets in the way.”
What Insight Isn’t
It’s not a stat.
Not a demographic.
Not “Millennials love experiences.”
Not pulled from a deck last year and recycled today.
Insight is friction. It’s clarity on a human truth your category hasn’t touched yet. It’s the gut-punch behind the campaign—not the headline.
Without it, the work may look good. But it won’t feel anything.
What This Means for Brands
If creativity is how we stand out, insight is how we break in. Into minds. Into culture. Into relevance.
Without it, your ad becomes wallpaper. With it, your ad becomes signal.
And right now, in an industry that can generate 10,000 versions of an idea with AI in under a minute,insight is the last unfair advantage.
This isn’t a creativity crisis. It’s a thinking one.
We’ve never had more tools, more channels, more data— and yet, we keep mistaking noise for impact.
Without real insight, we’re just adding color to the void. Insight is what gives a campaign a spine, a soul, and a shot at mattering. Without it, we’re not communicating—we’re just performing.
And in a world flooded with content, only the brands that see deeper will ever be seen at all.
