Is this a safe space? It has to be. There's a particular silence in creative reviews these days. You pitch a genuinely mad idea, the kind that should make your Creative Director snap his fingers and say "YES, THAT'S IT", and instead you get slow nods, a pause, and finally: "Interesting. But is it safe?"

Nobody wants to say it out loud, so we'll say it here: creatives have stopped being stupid enough.

Not stupid as in incompetent. Stupid as in brave. The kind that gave us Red Bull "Stratos", where a brand spent tens of millions to have Felix Baumgartner skyfall from the edge of space, or Burger King's "Moldy Whopper", which let a burger rot on camera for 35 days to prove it had no artificial preservatives. That's what we're missing here.

Somewhere between the fifth client call and the seventh round of feedback, that stupid slowly died. And honestly, we killed it ourselves as much as anyone did to us.

Exhibit A: Creative Fatigue Is Real, and It's Boring Us to Sleep

Nobody warns you that the job starts eating the very thing that makes you good at it. You arrive fired up to build something nobody's seen. A hundred "tone it down" remarks later, you're just surviving the week. Fatigue doesn't announce itself, it quietly lowers the ceiling on what you're willing to imagine, one safe brief at a time.

Exhibit B: The Client Wants Sales, Not a Cannes Lion

A lot of Nigerian brands don't actually want anything daring. They want daring's annoying cousin that nobody likes but everybody tolerates: "safe and proven". Or the idea that's never been done, except somewhere it has, by someone bigger, who already took the risk out for them. Yay.

Nobody's mad at clients for wanting to sell. That's the job. But when every brief arrives pre-sanded of anything sharp, the work looks like every other work wearing a different logo. Safe wins, but it wins quietly. Who says we can't win loudly?

The Cost of Playing It Safe

The safest ideas get ignored fastest. People don't remember competent. They remember what made them gasp, laugh and share. Nobody has ever gone home and told their partner about a tastefully executed 20% discount banner.

Peter Field's IPA analysis of almost 600 campaigns found creatively awarded work was once about 12 times more efficient than work that won nothing. By 2018 that edge had fallen below four times. Bravery did not stop paying. We stopped doing it properly.

Locally, Nigeria's return from Cannes this year was one shortlist, for Blanche Aigle's Gino World Jollof Festival, plus two jury seats. Kenya took its first ever Grand Prix. Smaller rooms are out-thinking us.

The ground is shifting under the safe option anyway. We wrote here last week about the advertising offences tribunal sworn in on 11 August. Once every agency in Lagos has to be correct, correct stops being an advantage and the idea is all that's left.

So How Do We Get Our Madness Back?

• Pitch the stupid idea first, not last. Don't save the wild one as a "just for fun" afterthought. Lead with it and let it set the ceiling.

• Kill the phrase "let's be realistic" in the first meeting. Realism has its place, round two. Round one should have no adults in the room.

• Protect the dumb thirty seconds. Before rationality starts filing paperwork, there's a window where your brain says something unhinged. Write it down before you talk yourself out of it.

• Clients don't reject bold ideas, they reject unconvincing ones. A wild idea carried with conviction and a clear "here's why this sells" lands nothing like one offered apologetically.

• Get bored on purpose. The best stupid ideas rarely arrive in the office. They show up in a Danfo, in a queue at your favourite bukka, in an argument with friends. Go outside, touch grass.

Last Word

Advertising was never supposed to be safe. It's the one industry where somebody gets paid, on purpose, to be a tad unreasonable. Where a client says "that's crazy" and your response is "awwww, thanks".

So here's to being stupid again. Not careless. Stupid with intention, with finesse, with audacity. The kind that makes a client nervous for three seconds before they realise it's the best thing they've seen all year.

Let's all try to be a little more stupid, okay? Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Key Takeaways

• Creative bravery is a commercial argument. IPA data put the efficiency edge of awarded work at roughly 12 times, below four by 2018.

• Fatigue lowers the ceiling quietly. Nobody announces the day they stopped pitching the wild one.

• Pre-sanded briefs produce work that looks identical with a different logo on it.

• Nigeria managed one Cannes Lions shortlist in 2026. Kenya took a Grand Prix.

• As enforcement tightens, being correct is the floor. The idea is the differentiator that's left.