Zac Baker

How do you break into, in Zac’s words, “a gatekept industry that waits for no one”? Starting out in film and pivoting to creative strategy, Zac got a foot in the agency door only for it to quickly close, facing redundancy nine months in. But the challenges, change, and subsequent growth gave him the perspective he brings to his work today, blending cultural insights, narrative-building and creative campaigns at MØRNING. Below, he talks about following your way of seeing the world and using that as your in.

What I do

My creative practice
I am a senior creative strategist and filmmaker. In my strategy work, I help brands overcome creative challenges through art direction, storytelling and insights. As a filmmaker, I direct documentaries that explore culture through a socio-political lens.

Influences and inspiration
Growing up in South East London – and London more broadly – has given me an invaluable creative resource to pull from. From family and friends to the energy and cadence of the city, there is something about London that is infectious and that I am always drawn back to.

Anyone who knows me knows I also have a deep romance with Brazil, specifically Rio de Janeiro and the state of Bahia. The people, the music, the art, the football, the scenery – it has all changed my life forever. If you have the opportunity to go, I implore you to take it.

When it comes to people: Noah Davis, Kelela, Michaela Cole, Jeff Mills, Ronaldinho, Dave Free, Spike Lee, Nala Sinephro.

Zac's work - “Is there Nightlife in the Afterlife? Crossword and Mantra”

My training
I attended Newcastle University for my undergraduate degree in Film. While the course itself was not always the most engaging or transformational, it really strengthened my critical thinking and research skills.

In terms of formal training in creative strategy, I have had very little. Most of what I know has come from learning firsthand alongside incredible colleagues, as well as through internal training and workshops.

Favourite recent project
Since August 2025, I have been leading creative and strategy for Nike Football's socials. As a lifelong football fan, sadly a Chelsea supporter, working on this account has been a dream. After winning the pitch, we helped shape the channel's tone of voice, activated Nike's always-on community management for the first time, and have led creative reactives on matchdays.

The greatest honour recently has been players I watch week in, week out demanding bespoke creative. I think that’s when you know you’re doing something right. When, after a UEFA Champions League game, a player is personally responding to your work and pushing you to go harder, bigger, and more elevated, you know the output is landing.

A day in the life
A typical day starts in the medium-pace lane at my local lido, then a walk to the studio, usually with a podcast or radio show in my ears. Once I am in, I support in leading the project stand-up, unpacking what needs to be delivered, gauging the team’s capacity and assigning R&Rs for the day. From there, we break into teams. This is where it gets messy in a good way: pens and paper out, ideas flying. Digging through are.na boards, Instagram and Substacks for references that feed the strategy and build the creative.

At lunch, if I have been on it that week, I will have a meal-prepped lunch and take a walk down to the canal with colleagues. After that, it’s back into the work, collaborating closely on output, running check-in calls, internal brainstorms, and usually wrapping with an end-of-day client call to present work, run through ROS and line up the rest of the week.

After work, I am usually at the cinema (my happy place), catching a friend for dinner or at a gig.

Nike’s first ever Whatsapp activation for the release of the Nike Air Max Dn8 (Agency: MØRNING.FYI)

How I got here

Starting my creative journey
I started out in film. After deferring my university place for a year, I spent months emailing every production company in London, cold-calling producers, DOPs, production designers, and sliding into DMs asking for coffees and the chance to pick people's brains. After a couple of long, silent months, I finally heard back from Greatcoat Films, a small independent production company based in Bow. After an intro coffee in their studio, Simon Oxley (huge shout-out) offered a young, hungry, enthusiastic Zac a six-month internship.

That opportunity started everything. From making coffees in the studio to running on music video sets, I was fortunate to meet some of the best in the business, growing a previously empty network into a priceless contact list. I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. Quite literally, I was sat next to Danny Boyle on the train home from my very first day, picking his brains and chewing his ear off before walking him to dinner that evening. Sorry Danny, but also a big shout-out. He is one of the nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Despite feeling like I was living the dream, it was not easy. I was often walking along A roads in the dark with my phone torch on, trying to reach a 4am call time after four buses and three miles on foot. I would not recommend it. If you can, learn to drive. I sacrificed large chunks of my social life and dealt with anxiety and insomnia.

Even so, I have no regrets. Every day was different. One day I would be haggling on Roman Road Market for shoot props, the next I would be sat at a table at the UKMVAs, seeing the full 360 of a gatekept industry that waits for no one. I no longer work full-time in film, but the lessons from that first introduction to the creative industries have never left me, and they never will.

Landing my first few jobs, clients and/or commissions
After a few years working full-time and freelance in film, I transitioned into cultural and creative strategy, research and insights. I had no idea this industry even existed until I fell deep into an internet rabbit hole and discovered SPACE10 (RIP). I became fixated on understanding how design thinking, documentary-style research and architectural innovation could shape work for brands like IKEA.

As someone who had just left university with a love for film, art, architecture and fashion, I found the space where creative practice and academia meet genuinely exciting. It was the first time I saw a world where all my interests could intersect and cross over.

With no real exposure to the industry, I was keen to learn more, applying for internships and entry-level roles across agencies. I first cut my teeth as an insights intern at Flamingo (also RIP), learning the fundamentals of qualitative research, client management and strategic narratives.

Biggest challenges along the way
One of the biggest challenges in my journey through the creative industries was being made redundant from my first agency job. After putting in all the work to get through the door, having it close on you again is tough. It kicked off a long, six-month search for the next role.

That period was difficult. Going from having structure and a sense of purpose to losing both meant I had to rebuild them elsewhere, through fitness and upskilling with online courses. As challenging as it was, it gave me perspective. It made me more selective and intentional about where I wanted to work next. I learned my self-worth and stopped settling for roles where I would feel undervalued, overworked and underrepresented.

My social media and self-promotion vibe is…
My online brand is basically non-existent. I am aware we are in the personal brand era: I’m working on it, here I am! At MØRNING, most of what we do is in the shadows and locked under NDA, which makes sharing anything publicly a challenge.

From the perspective of someone working on social strategies for brands, if I had to give one piece of advice, it’s this: make it work for you, not for them. Not everyone needs to be a content creator, and the space is already overcrowded and oversaturated.

If you are serious about it, look at people like Sharkeyflor, Cabbages and Ninosbuidings who build for a specific audience and stick to it. No chasing trends, no empty output, just work with intent. Or take a note from Zack Fox and keep it minimal. Zack made his website a live Google Sheets page. In a world where everything is being maxxed out, restraint stands out.

The Dweller Forever Archive built and created by Frankie Decaiza Hutchinson

Three things I've found useful in my career:

This film has become a seminal reference for much of my work across the industries I have moved through. The way Jenn weaves so many themes across such a short duration, and her ability to use archive to tell stories of the past in order to create new futures, is something I constantly filter my client and personal work through, both in my referencing and my storytelling.

What Frankie has created with Dweller, both as a resource and a festival, is incredibly inspiring to me. Much like Jenn's films, Dweller feels like a utopic home for Black history and future histories to live through. In my strategic thinking, I am always looking for ways to engage audiences across as many touchpoints as possible, with intention behind each approach. I look to Dweller often as a north star for URL/IRL and sustainable community building that feels morally unwavering and rooted not just in Black experience, but in the human experience at large.

My final selection may feel abstract to many, but to me it feels like scripture. For those unfamiliar, Walter Segal was a German architect famous for the self-build method, an approach that democratised design, architecture and home ownership. This pioneering method made building your own home more accessible and affordable, offering self-builders long-term discounted rents in return for constructing the homes themselves.

My connection to it begins with growing up in Lewisham, where Segal's method was first put into practice with Black self-builders at the forefront. Seeing these buildings from a young age made me deeply curious about their form. I give a great deal of credit to Segal for how I conceptualise my own practice, creating work that feels open-sourced and invites others to take it, build on it and recontextualise it beyond its original form.

Courses, programmes, initiatives, access schemes or job boards I've found helpful

My greatest learnings when it comes to making money and supporting myself as a creative:
Never feel ashamed or embarrassed to take work outside your interests to support yourself. Times are tough and the gates around industries are only getting tighter. Stepping outside my own practice – often by force through lack of work, Covid and health reasons – gave me the perspective I needed to return to it differently, pushing my work further than I ever imagined.

My advice

My most useful career tips
My most useful tip borrows from the title of Jenn Nkiru's previously mentioned film, Rebirth Is Necessary. In many ways, I live my life through that phrase, but in simpler terms: embrace change and treat every experience as a learning experience. Growth is not optional, it is a necessity.

What I'd say to someone looking to get into a similar role
When asked this question, I always encourage people to demonstrate their skills elsewhere first, so that work can convert into client opportunities. In my case, my film work gave me a body of research to draw from, showing that I was deeply curious and reference-driven. When I landed my internship at Flamingo, I had something tangible to show: a methodology I had developed on my own terms for exploring and answering questions about the world.

For others, this looks different. Friends have done it through writing, starting a Substack or applying highly attuned and creative thinking to their own areas of interest. All of it served the same purpose: showing agencies and studios what they were capable of, and how that thinking would translate into client work.