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

In House is a new column from It’s Nice That where we go inside the workings of major brands, agencies and companies shaping the future of the creative industry.

“No hierarchy – best idea wins.” That’s how 4Creative describes its culture, and it’s a philosophy that’s served them well.

It was set up in 2001 to promote Channel 4, the UK’s most relentlessly innovative TV channel, whose output ranges from drama, documentaries and the Paralympics to genre-defining shows like Gogglebox and Grand Designs.

The in-house agency combines prodigious output with creative excellence – this year it built a horrific/terrific fountain of vomiting figures for an exposé on sewage in UK water, and hung huge hand-scrawled notes from end-of-terrace houses to promote the powerful Russell T Davies drama, Tip Toe. It also found time to rebrand 4Creative itself.

We sat down with director Miketta Lane, who first joined 4Creative in 2014, and executive creative director and creative partner David Wigglesworth, who joined in January 2025 after working in agencies like Droga5 and Grey London. We discussed making work people talk about, encouraging a vibrant ideas culture and why the best creative work happens quickly.

RA: Miketta, you have a long history at Channel 4, while David you joined last year. How do those differing relationships with the brand shape your dynamic?

ML: I obviously carry quite a lot of institutional knowledge but it’s really important that people don’t become institutionalised. That can happen.

David brought such a fresh perspective. There is always a risk of doing things because it’s how we’ve always done things, and there are questions that we have probably stopped asking.

David asks those questions and sometimes I go, “Oh yeah, I don’t really know why we do that”.

As David said, there is a lot of emotional attachment to the brand in this building and there’s a risk that it stops us making certain decisions.

RA: What’s the biggest difference you found moving from agencies into an in-house role, David?

DW: In the agency world, things move quite slowly. It feels like half the battles you’re having are within the building, just trying to protect the best work before it even gets to a client. By the time you get to the end of a project, it’s just a grind.

Coming into Channel 4, it’s like absolute crack for a creative. We need things to move fast because of the shape of the business. There are hard deadlines you have to hit because there are shows that are going out.

You need that creative mindset where you’re a yes person, and you’re happy to work fast and scrappy.

RA: Does the fact that you’re an in-house creative agency for a creative company make your lives easier or harder?

ML: Both. We never have to sell the importance of creativity. And we work with the most talented people – writers, commissioners, marketers and strategists. That’s brilliant, but everybody has a point of view.

DW: Everyone has a lot of respect for what each other does. Channel 4 is big but it has a village feel, so it’s easy to get to know the characters in all the different departments.

For example, we’ve got great relationships with our commissioners. Oftentimes we’re having chats about things that aren’t even briefs yet, but they’ll be telling us stuff they’re excited about, and then we get excited too. It doesn’t feel like a client saying, “This is how we want it”.

RA: Speed seems like an important part of the 4Creative culture.

DW: I hate things taking too long. When you get something that excites you, or scares you, the faster you act – to try and discover what it was that scared you or excited you – that’s the fastest way to get to good work.

ML: We did have to hold our nerve on that one. It didn’t go through seamlessly.

DW: We’re not going to outspend some of the behemoths in the industry. So we need to be a little bit smarter – we have to be ready to make work that might make us feel uncomfortable in the hope that it has the impact we want, versus just making something safe and guaranteeing you can force it in front of people by paying for eyeballs.

RA: With Fountain of Filth and the Tip Toe campaign you were dealing with some pretty weighty subject matter. How do you approach creative projects like that?

DW: The only way is by not overthinking it. You’re trying to distill the one important thing you want people to feel, or the one thing you want people to know.

Our job is to pique people’s interest enough so they go and look into the show and discover if it’s for them or not.

RA: What was the one message for Tip Toe you wanted to get across?

DW: There are some really important themes in the show, about gay rights regressing and fear in the LGBTQ+ community.

But we were lucky to work closely with the show’s creator, Russell T Davies, on the campaign. He wanted people to know this is a neighbourhood drama about two characters who live next door to each other. So anyone interested in a neighbourhood thriller might come in and watch this, and then hopefully it will impact them more when they discover what the core themes are.

ML: That’s why Channel 4 is so important as a public service broadcaster. We’ve got this platform and we have a real responsibility in how we use it.