by Video interview on July 29, 2026
In this episode, Nat Poulter, co-founder and CEO of A Coffee With… Restless, chats with ExchangeWire’s John Still about AI, creativity, and how the path from discovery to consideration to purchase is changing at Flat White.
Founded in February of this year, Restless had a blank sheet of paper to define what a new agency should look like in an AI world, rather than retrofitting or forcing AI into existing workflows, as many large independent and network agencies have to do. To become an AI-native agency, they looked at ways to leverage technology into both their existing infrastructure and custom software.
Too often, creative directors lock ideas into insights and run in the wrong direction, resulting in content that doesn’t fit a specific persona or segment. The direction of travel is to aggregate information to understand different personas, allowing agencies to reframe concepts and communicate them directly to their target audience. Creative will be the new targeting based on AI-driven insights.
What is an AI native agency?
Nat divides AI-native institutions into two worlds, the first being infrastructure. Agencies need to consider their underlying workflows to understand how to build agent systems to automate tedious tasks and improve efficiency. The second is custom software. How to use AI to build tools that make your services significantly more efficient.
A small, growing agency needs a new and active business division. Restless essentially organizes the brains of experts who live within an organization, such as the VP of Performance, to accomplish tasks. By automating repetitive parts of your workflow, your team has more time to focus on what truly brings value to your clients.
AI insights and creative strategies
Nat emphasizes the need to understand where both AI and humans add value. AI excels at pattern recognition and synthesizes signals from vast amounts of data. You can then leave this in the hands of professionals. Rather than replacing humans, AI will serve as an enhancement to our strengths. Not only is the human touch still essential, but it will become even more important.
“I think creativity is about deviating from the average and breaking from it. So I think they need to work together. The AI comes together and brings all the information to the surface and puts it in the hands of creative strategists. And they use that to find meaningful truths and things that resonate with someone. And then they use that to jump off… as a springboard to springboard new ideas.” — Nat Poulter
Antenna, Restless’ custom creative intelligence platform, ingests data packs from clients, customer interviews, brand research, and social media. The vast amount of context that exists within your software can reveal important insights that shape your creative strategy. This eliminates the need for lengthy research and gives your team the information to generate better, more personalized ideas.
Personas and personalized media
We live in a world where media activation is automated. A big draw is the walled garden. They all have automated bidding strategies to help you find your audience. Now, agencies can also chat with synthetic personas to test concepts, ideas, and hooks before spending on media.
Nutt believes that creative is essentially the new targeting, which is based on insight. As agencies build feedback loops, we could begin to move toward authentic, personalized creative. You can run that creative across different media channels, reverse engineer why it worked or not, and continually iterate over time.
AgencyAgentic AIAI Automation Creative Data Media Performance Personalization
