Michael Cruz New York / Connecticut

Creative Director · Filmmaker · Financial Services, Healthcare, Energy & B2B · New York / Connecticut

I make Michael Cruz, creative director and co-founder of Summer Friday complicated things interesting.

Scroll. It gets simpler.

I’ve spent 20+ years turning complicated businesses, products and ideas into things people Michael Cruz, creative director, New York might actually give a shit about.

Financial servicesHealthcareEnergyTechnologyB2B And occasionally things that are easier to explain.

Most of the time, I do it with some very talented people at Summer Friday.

Selected work · Creative direction, brand and film

Some things I’ve made

  1. National GridProject C5,000+ New Yorkers voted Energy · 2021–present National Grid Project C: one story for a lot of good work. Turning a utility’s scattered community programs into a campaign New Yorkers actually voted in. See the work →
  2. E*TRADE1,000sof lessons. Millions of viewers a month. Financial services · 2007–present · On request E*TRADE Teaching millions of people to invest, one episode at a time. An investor education series that has run for years and grown to millions of monthly viewers. Request access to the work →
  3. KatchProactive
    by Design.    A new brand, launched to 500+ employees         Brand · 2025–present · On request Katch Proactive by Design. A new B2B healthcare brand, built from a blank page and launched to 500+ employees. Request access to the work →
  4. HexionImagine
    everything.    A refreshed brand, carried across web, video and events         B2B · Creative direction Hexion Imagine everything. Bringing a refreshed chemicals brand to life across paid media, video and a new website. See the work →

All the work, with the long explanations

Thinking · Essays on creative direction and brand

Things I’ve been thinking about

All 7 →
  1. Financial services Why does financial services advertising all look the same? Couples on docks. Grandkids on shoulders. A sunset. Now guess the bank.
  2. Craft How do you make a complicated business interesting? Short answer: stop explaining the whole thing.
  3. Brand strategy Nobody cares about your brand strategy. They care about what it makes you do.
  4. B2B The problem with B2B creative isn’t B2B. It’s the assumption that business buyers stop being people at 9 a.m.
  5. Creative direction What does a creative director actually do? Mostly: decides. Then protects the decision.
  6. Industry AI isn’t going to kill creativity. Mediocrity might. The machines are very good at average. That should worry average.
  7. Clients Why great clients make better creative. Every great piece of work has a client who said yes to it.

Other things I take unnecessarily seriously

Flies them. Will explain crosswind landings unprompted.

I don’t do this alone.

Summer Friday

Michael walking through Manhattan with members of the Summer Friday team

The agency I co-founded with Rob Simone, Sarah Roberts, and Alicia Wiedemann. Strategy, creative and content for brands with complicated things to say.

Meet the team

Got something interesting?

Tell me what you’re working on. The weirder and more complicated, the better.

michael.cruz@heysummerfriday.com
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