March, 2026.- At a time when traditional agencies are struggling to keep pace with digital culture, WHITE64 is betting on a leader capable of navigating both high-budget worlds and the economy of content at scale. Michael Wilson takes on the role of Executive Creative Director with a clear mandate from Mick Sutter: transform the creative department into a fast, adaptable, and results-oriented structure that breaks the mold. With a background that includes names like Rate.com, 72andSunny, and TBWA\Chiat\Day, Wilson brings a unique hybrid vision. He understands that success in 2026 isn’t just about winning awards, but about using tools like AI and short-form video not as talent replacements, but as amplifiers to generate unexpected ideas that move the business needle.
In this exclusive interview with Roastbrief, Michael Wilson breaks down his philosophy on “scalable creative systems” and why legacy agency processes no longer work for modern content. Wilson reflects on how his time on the brand side taught him to remove unnecessary constraints that often stifle social media impact, and how his education at the prestigious VCU Brandcenter instilled an non-negotiable truth: the idea is all that matters. Discover how Wilson plans to inject that passion into every corner of WHITE64, proving that any project—no matter how small—has the potential to become an iconic piece when approached with the curiosity of a creator and the rigor of an industry veteran.
1. The New ECD Role: You’ve joined WHITE64 in a newly created Executive Creative Director position. What does the role entail, and how do you define it differently from a traditional Creative Director role? What mandate did Mick Sutter give you when you came on board?
Like every company doing creative work right now, White64 is trying to figure out how to navigate a landscape that’s shifted dramatically. Not just the competitive landscape of agencies and production companies, but the fundamental shifts in what’s possible with AI, short-form content, and evolving production models.
Mick and I had a lot of these conversations before I came on board. The mandate is essentially: help format the creative department and our processes to be fast, adaptable, and focused on bar-setting creative output. That means looking at how we structure teams, what production capabilities we keep in-house versus with vendors, and what our process looks like from project intake through creative delivery.
Nothing about this work looks the way it did even six years ago. Short-form video and social require us to move faster and measure success differently than traditional marketing. AI is forcing us to decide what still needs legacy production approaches and what can, and should, be done with newer tools. The line between a million-dollar shoot and an AI-generated output is blurring, and we need to understand all the tools at our disposal so we can recommend to our clients when to use which, and what the trade-offs are.
The real opportunity, and what I think sets an agency apart right now, is pushing those tools beyond middle-of-the-bell-curve output into genuinely great creative work. That’s something you can’t get by typing a prompt into a chat window or an image generator. It takes people who know the tools deeply enough to use them as a foundation for unexpected, award-winning work, at speeds and budgets that weren’t possible before. That’s what we’re building toward.
2. From Rate.com to WHITE64: You recently served as ECD at Rate.com, the second-largest retail mortgage lender, where you built a high-output creative organization and grew social content from zero to 30-50 pieces per month. How did that experience on the brand side, scaling creative at speed, prepare you for the agency side at WHITE64?
Before starting at Rate, I worked at an agency where we developed a lot of social content for a certain social media company. That experience taught me a ton about what effective brand content looks like from both a creative and production standpoint. Before that, my production experience was mostly big-budget commercial work. Long timelines, lots of revisions, casting, location scouting. That traditional production model just doesn’t work in social. It’s slow and it’s expensive. And meanwhile, there are tens of thousands of creators making content out of their living rooms that gets more engagement than polished brand work costing ten times as much.
Rate, like every brand, was asking: why can’t we do that? And to their credit, they understood that performing on social means removing a lot of normal brand constraints. Templates, logo lockups, strict CTAs, sneaking in sales messages. All of that gets sniffed out immediately. You have to be willing to create content purely for entertainment or to provide value, without selling every time you open your mouth. And you have to do it without tarnishing the brand or spending $50,000 per post.
That’s what the machine I helped build at Rate was focused on: genuinely entertaining, on-brand content produced at a fraction of traditional costs. We found a good recipe, and it extends well beyond social into short-form production approaches I’m hoping to bring to White64’s clients.
There are still moments where traditional polished production is the right call. But agencies that can produce great content at scale, at speed, and on tight budgets are going to separate themselves from those stuck solely in legacy models. It’s the same conversation as the AI one. Agencies can’t just be digital ads, experience plays, and broadcast spots anymore. We need to be experts across all forms of creative output and adaptable enough to match our approach to both the client’s goals and their budget. Too often in legacy agency models, those two things aren’t weighed together.
3. Scaling Creative Systems: Your remit includes “building scalable production systems” to ensure the agency’s work holds up across channels and volume. What does a scalable production system look like in practice? How do you build systems that enable efficiency and volume without sacrificing creative quality?
Figuring out better creative systems and processes is something I’ve been doing my whole career, even if I didn’t realize it was a differentiator until about halfway through. The short version is that legacy creative processes don’t work for modern creative output, the same way legacy production models don’t work for short-form content.
The traditional agency process is slow. A brief comes in from the client. We rewrite it. We brief a creative team. We go back and forth with rounds of work. We show the client. We get feedback. We repeat a few of those steps. Then we eventually bring on a production partner to bring the idea to life. That process can take months to over a year. When you’re working at the speed of social, that timeline needs to compress down to days, sometimes less than 24 hours. So the question becomes: what can be streamlined, and what can’t?
The biggest lever is equipping creatives with brand knowledge before a brief ever lands so that when it does, it’s just adding specifics. That eliminates a ton of ramp-up time and rounds of internal review. From there, it’s about getting the green light fast, moving straight into production, and showing work that’s close to finished rather than just an idea on a page. You also need the right infrastructure around the creatives: project management that keeps everyone clear on where work is in the pipeline, producers who understand social production realities, and creative directors staying collaborative in real time so nothing sits waiting for a review meeting.
When all of that is working, production breaks down into components with predictable outputs based on time and budget. Need more ideas? Turn up creators. Filming too slow? Bring in more camera-capable people. Editing bottlenecked? Get editors cutting in tandem as footage comes in. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but like any recipe, there’s a set of principles you can follow and adjust to make the work faster, more efficient, and better for your clients.
4. The Crispin/72andSunny/TBWA Pedigree: Your background includes senior roles at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, 72andSunny, and TBWA\Chiat\Day—some of the most influential creative agencies of the past two decades. What did you absorb from each of those environments, and how are you applying those lessons at WHITE64?
Those agencies and the people I worked with there shaped the creative I am today, no doubt. I’ve had the honor of working with some incredibly talented people, both the creative leadership at those agencies and the partners I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with over the years. Everything I know about how to work with other creatives, how to push ideas, how to run a process, I learned from my time at those places, for better or for worse.
I think the one thing all of those agencies have in common is that they do everything they can to come up with ideas they’re genuinely proud of. It’s not about checking a box or just getting the work done. You always want to meet a business objective and give your clients what they’re looking for, but when you come up with ideas you’re truly passionate about, it shows up in the work. And that work separates not only the brand from their competitors, but you as an agency.
Like any experience in life, I took lessons from each of those places about what worked and what didn’t. Creative leaders I wanted to emulate and ones I didn’t. Approaches that I found motivating and ones that were soul-crushing. I don’t think there’s any one right way to do this work, but the way I communicate it to teams I lead now is simple: my goal is to be genuinely excited about the work, regardless of the client, the budget, or the ask. You can do something cool and eye-catching for literally any creative assignment out there. You just have to look for it. You can’t always bring those ideas to life for whatever reason, but when you stop looking and just start providing what you think is expected, the spark dies, and the work becomes status quo.
What really excited me about coming to White64 was Mick’s desire to push the work into that territory, to motivate creatives to find those opportunities in even the smallest assignments. That’s probably the biggest lesson I took from my time at those agencies: any project, big or small, can turn into something award-winning. Bringing that lens to every corner of our creative work here is the goal.
5. Raising the Bar on New Business: You’re joining at a moment of significant growth for WHITE64, with new clients including U.S. Travel, Williamsburg Tourism Council, and PenFed Home. How do you, as ECD, ensure that the creative work matches the agency’s ambition and helps sustain this momentum?
The agency has seen really impressive growth over the last couple of years, especially in the face of an industry dealing with so much adversity right now. Nobody has a crystal ball that can tell us what this industry looks like in ten years, but I think the filter for sustaining momentum is pretty straightforward: do work that is extremely unexpected and extremely effective.
Some of my favorite work I’ve ever seen has been for clients nobody had previously heard of, on budgets that were minuscule. The size of the project doesn’t determine the quality of the idea. If our creative team can continue to find unexpected ways to solve problems for our clients across every assignment, the growth will follow. When you’re genuinely passionate about the work you do, it shows up in the output, and people want to be a part of that.
6. The Brandcenter Influence: You hold a Master’s from VCU’s Brandcenter, one of the most respected creative strategy programs in the world. How did that education shape your approach to creative leadership, and what does it mean to you to now be leading creative work rather than studying it?
I feel genuinely lucky to be working in a job that I love, and a lot of that traces back to the Brandcenter. The biggest thing I took from my time there, and it’s stuck with me throughout my entire career, is that it’s not about how you do something. It’s the idea. The idea is all that matters. What is going to set your client apart? What is going to get eyeballs? Come up with that first, and you can figure the rest out. Production constraints, budget, execution, all of that is solvable once you have a great idea.
The other piece is passion. You need to be able to convince people who can’t see what you’re seeing in your head that this thing you’re describing should bring them as much excitement as it brings you. The Brandcenter gave me those foundational concepts from the very beginning, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without that education.
Being in a position of creative leadership now and being trusted with guiding people’s ideas is something I don’t take lightly. My hope is that I can help creative teams the way creative leaders helped me: find big ideas in small moments and shape them into something amazing.
