Ask Anna: How do I fight the monotony of repetitive creative briefs?

For the first question in our new creative advice column, CR agony aunt Anna Higgs helps a copywriter cope with monotony in the workplace, and offers tips for how to stay creative when dealing with repetitive briefs.

Anna Higgs

Dear Anna,

I am a copywriter and as a creative, I thrive on ‘newness’; every few months a new project, a new problem to be cracked, a new opportunity to see what we can create.

How do I fight the monotony of receiving those same yearly projects from those same clients? The once-every-year campaign that you know will have the exact same brief as last year. Is this why we creatives end up jumping from agency to agency every few years? To avoid having to work on the exact same sale or acquisition campaign year on year?

I know. Ideas are infinite. But my passion for repetition isn’t. Is the only thing to do, move on?

Katie, Canada