New thinking, real results: Wes Morton on Gen Z, AI-powered marketing, and building Creative Company

Welcome to Coffee.Press.Play., brought to you by The Business of Games Podcast, powered by Xsolla. Recorded live at GDC 2026 inside the Xsolla Clubhouse, this series puts a twist on the traditional interview format: guests play a round of a classic video game against our Xsolla host and the outcome determines whether they face an easy question or a hard one.In this episode, host Ed Lin sits down with Wes Morton, CEO and co-founder of Creative Company — a marketing technology firm serving media, entertainment, and tech brands across three practice areas: brand PR, digital products, and consumer insights.When we asked Wes who has influenced his decision-making most, he pointed to his own team — specifically the Gen Z employees who are bringing new technologies, new campaign strategies, and an entirely different relationship with work to the table every day. For a founder building a company from the ground up, that kind of bottom-up influence isn't just refreshing. It's structural.The conversation gets specific fast. Wes shares how one of his youngest employees, with no formal technical background, coded a fully functional front-end interface for EA client work using Vercel's AI tools — then handed it to the CTO, who said they could use all of it. That moment kicked off a company-wide conversation about AI coding tools, enterprise licensing, and what it means when non-technical people can ship technical work.What you'll hear:Why Wes looks to his Gen Z team — not industry veterans — as his primary source of influenceHow Creative Company is using large language models to reinvent consumer research in an industry that hasn't fundamentally changed since the 1940sWhat a single Vercel-powered prototype from a junior employee revealed about the future of technical workWhy staying culture-forward matters as much in marketing technology as it does in the games themselvesLet's get into it.Coffee.Press.Play. is an ongoing mini-series, and more conversations with our GDC guests are on the way. Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch full episodes on our YouTube channel.Missed us at GDC 2026? Stay tuned to our LinkedIn page for announcements on where we'll be next. And catch up on recent episodes at xsolla.com/podcast.For more insights and resources, visit xsolla.com/podcast. Want to join the conversation? Follow and comment on our LinkedIn page at The Business of Games Podcast. That’s where we’ll be sharing updates, highlights, and continuing the discussion. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share the podcast with friends who want to learn more about the business of games.