4Creative’s Miketta Lane and David Wigglesworth on why the best creative work happens quickly

RA: So it’s not like you’re over to one side as the in-house agency – you’re very much part of the organisation?

ML: Yeah, exactly. As part of our recent rebrand, we wanted to bring the Channel 4 identity back into our creative identity to show that we’re embedded within the brand.

RA: What was the hardest thing about rebranding 4Creative?

DW: It wasn’t hard at all. There wasn’t a brief. Our brand had existed as it was for about 10 years and one of the designers just took it upon himself to have a look at it. He was like, “Oh surely we can make this better?”

He pulled together a load of ideas in a deck and we were like, this is fucking sick. Why would we not do this? The best stuff comes when people feel empowered to come up with something like that.

RA: Lots of creative teams say they want that culture, but it’s not always easy to build in practice.

ML: When we do our annual planning, we make sure there is space for brand work. We always set aside time and a bit of budget, so people can play around and think a bit differently.

DW: With the rebrand, we could have easily been like, "Dude, we’re too busy. We’ve got so much on”. But when you get excited by a creative idea, you have to show that, and you have to share that, to make your team feel that.

ML: Then it’s our responsibility to protect the integrity of the idea. If you’re a creative and you come up with an idea, but it’s completely different when it goes out into the world, that’s quite disheartening.

DW: That’s why Miketta and I always stay close to the work, to make sure that it goes out in its purest way possible.