This years crop of “Big Game” Ads turned out to be a big disappointment. While the whole world was watching the creative guys seem to have taken their eye off the ball. In my years as a creative director I never had the kind of resources available to create a thirty second spot on the “The Big Game”, but  I never would have let most of this crap out of my trash bin.

Sure we love the E Trade baby stuff, but we’ve seen funnier. Ok, the Bud dog sitter was funny but totally forgettable. Doritos failed to even bump the bar let alone clear it. All the creative people involved should have listened to John F. Kennedy “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. “

In the latest Miller-McCune Tom Jacobs writes:

Writing in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, a research team led by University of Amsterdam psychologist Gerben Van Kleef describes an experiment involving 63 undergraduates. To begin, each filled out an 11-item “personal need for structure scale,” in which they rate the degree to which they agreed with such statements as “I become uncomfortable when the rules in a situation are not clear.”

“Individuals scoring on the low end of the scale are more inclined to search for and incorporate new information when making judgments,” the researchers write, “whereas people on the high end strive to maintain simple structures.” In psychological jargon, the first group exhibits high epistemic motivation, the second group low epistemic motivation.

Next, the participants performed two variations on a standard creativity test: They were given eight minutes to write down as many uses as they could come up with for a potato, and an unlimited time to think of as many ways as possible to use a brick. In between those two sessions, they viewed a video clip in which an actor read a list of instructions, telling them “the more ideas the better,” “the more unusual the idea the better” and “combine and improve your ideas.”

Half the participants saw a version of the video in which the actor was emotionless. The other half saw a version in which “he frowned a lot, spoke with an angry and irritable tone of voice, clenched his fists and looked stern.”

His palpable annoyance affected different people in different ways. The researchers found exposure to the angry man increased the creativity of participants with high epistemic motivation (those relatively open to new information), but decreased it for those with low epistemic motivation (those with a strong need for structure).

“Individuals with low epistemic motivation are less likely to consider the task-relevant implications of others’ anger,” the researchers note. “Rather, they develop negative reactions toward their co-worker, which leads to disengagement and lower performance.”

Further analysis found that “among individuals with high epistemic motivation, expressions of anger also increased relative originality — that is, the number of unique ideas relative to the total number of ideas generated. This indicates that expressions of anger do not just lead individuals to generate more ideas, but also to generate more original ideas.”

So, if you’re a supervisor trying to inspire creativity on the part of your staff, it would clearly help to understand each of their personalities before deciding who would benefit from your sharply expressed displeasure. And, the researchers add, it would also be wise to save your potentially inspiring irritation for the right moment.

“Given that variables such as time pressure or environmental noises have been found to decrease epistemic motivation,” they write, “these findings suggest that expressions of anger are unlikely to increase creativity under such conditions.”

If you have ever worked in advertising, this information may make you wonder about some of the creative people you worked with. Hopefully, in your case the anger was kept to a minimum perhaps except in the heart of your favorite Creative Director.

To reach this conclusion, they carried out two experiments. In the first, they brought together 12 groups of four individuals and told each group to come up with a 15-second advertisement for a made-up product. Everyone was asked to contribute ideas for the ad, but ultimately the group had to decide on only one. Anyone familiar with the modern “collaborative” office environment will know that that is a challenge.

Some of the groups had a dog underfoot throughout, while the others had none. After the task, all the volunteers had to answer a questionnaire on how they felt about working with the other—human—members of the team. Mr Honts found that those who had had a dog to slobber and pounce on them ranked their team-mates more highly on measures of trust, team cohesion and intimacy than those who had not.

In the other experiment, which used 13 groups, the researchers explored how the presence of an animal altered players’ behaviour in a game known as the prisoner’s dilemma. In the version of this game played by the volunteers, all four members of each group had been “charged” with a crime. Individually, they could choose (without being able to talk to the others) either to snitch on their team-mates or to stand by them. Each individual’s decision affected the outcomes for the other three as well as for himself in a way that was explained in advance. The lightest putative sentence would be given to someone who chose to snitch while the other three did not; the heaviest penalty would be borne by a lone non-snitch. The second-best outcome came when all four decided not to snitch. And so on.

Having a dog around made volunteers 30% less likely to snitch than those who played without one.

So perhaps instead of hiring that next consultant (like me) or the next pile of entries to some obscure awards festival, spend the money on the heart and soul of your agency at the Humane Society.

Flash forward. Today the creative department is the engine of the agency. Creatives can be treated like gods. The paradigm has shifted. The other thing that has shifted is the fun side of the business. Suits now spend time on their computers reviewing stats instead of drinking manhattans. Creatives seem to have more interest in facebook and twitter than drawing and thinking.

It all makes me wonder how Ted Bates would feel about this transition.

Professor Richad Wiseman writes in BBC Focus Magazine: “As you read this, people in offices around the globe will be having meetings trying to come up with good ideas. Researchers have gone to great trouble to test this technique….The results suggest that groups actually hinder creativity. Group brainstorming may fail because of a phenomenon known as ‘social loafing’ first noticed in the late 1880′s by French agricultural engineer Max Ringlemann. In one of the studies, people were asked to pull on a rope and life increasingly heavy weights. Wen working along, individuals lifted around 85 kilograms, but managed only 65 kilos when placed in a group, they are not as motivated to put in the time and energy. After all, they won’t receive personal praise if the group does well and can blame others if it performs badly. Group brainstorming seems to stifle, not stimulate, the creative juices”.

So next time the client or the account people start to make rumblings about a group creative session, have your ideas ready and make a dental appointment.

Recently, at one agency I took the client brief and re-wrote it. I actually wrote 2 creative briefs. In the first, I treated it like the agency normally did. It wasn’t really a creative brief as much as it was a production brief. With the other creative brief I treated it like is was a new client. My briefs were then distributed to the 2 creative teams at the agency.

The results: group one working as they always did, produced a campaign on target with the client brief.

The other group pushed themselves (thinking it was a new business pitch for a client with very high creative standards). They created a new campaign that provided a completely new creative stance and executions. The result: the client was suffering from shock and awe after the presentation.

The lesson learned : agencies need to develop a more courageous response to client demands. Don’t just give the same solutions over and over. Be brave, try something “out of left field”. It will say something special about your agency and it will give your creatives the chance to demonstrate their Courage.

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As a new business consultant for ad agencies across North America I am constantly surprised how powerful this new business lead generator can be. In fact, it is now the largest generator of new business for ad agencies in the US.

Recently, they have decided to test the waters in Canada so if you have an agency, what are you waiting for?

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“It’s great to have everyone here at XXX agency a part of our new business effort. It starts with a simple question: do you know or have any friends or relatives who might need an ad agency? If you do, let’s have lunch on me and we can talk about it”

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He suggested she call her uncle and see if he was interested. Three days later, the agency had picked up over $100,000 in annual billings as the Houston Area CocaCola Bottlers agency of record.

One memo. Amazing how you can look at advertising agency growth from so many directions. What’s your perspective?