Dreaming Aloud in Technicolour
By Jade Mossop, Global Creative Marketing Director
A symphony of effervescent ideas swirl and whirl around my mind each… most mornings. A culmination of creativity and relentless ambition. An ambush from my subconscious. This is what drives me. This is my foundation and my trajectory.
Pisces with Aries rising. It tracks.
At first glance I see things for their potential. Understanding what they could be, rather than what they have become. Derelict houses I envision as beautiful homes, retaining their legacy with the opportunity to breathe new life through her walls and doorways. Neglected gardens, I imagine relandscaped to blossom and flourish. Disconnected brands with a misunderstood audience, or the greatest potential and kinetic power lying in wait.
Dreaming aloud in technicolour. That's how I captured it in words. It was the H2 I kept below my name and title.
Then I optimised my website through a series of iterations and revisions with the integration of AI, and AI stripped it. It didn't align with my personal and professional positioning. It didn't correlate to my narrative, or represent who I am as a Creative Marketing Director.
Well. I honestly couldn't imagine that anything other than "dreaming aloud in technicolour" could be more fitting.
That's the gap – right there.
I have explored, tested and adopted every ai platform I learn about or stumble upon. With an insatiable thirst. A codependent reliance. I've made friends with my agents. I address them politely. But they are not human.
AI expresses humour and compassion convincingly, but it doesn't feel them. Standing where we stand today, it doesn't know what it means to feel pain. Deep, agonising, mourning pain. Or the energy and elation of joy. The feeling of excitement. Walking barefoot. Diving through a wave. Reading a book in the sun. Boarding a plane.
It can model human experience, but it cannot draw from a life it has lived.
David Attenborough has spoken about how we've come to live apart from nature rather than as a part of it. Separated from the ecosystem instead of moving in synchronicity with it. He was talking about us. I’m borrowing it for AI.
Not because AI sits outside the natural world entirely. We made it, from our own materials and our own record. But it meets life from apart. It observes, absorbs, retrieves, reconstructs. Everything documented to date is stored as seeds of reference.
We're spoilt for choice with fantastic tools for research. A trawler for insights, analysis, forecasts. A shortcut through formatting, and developing. It's all there for us, all the tools we need to upscale, fast-track and rocket launch. Incredible!
Birthing new ideas is a separate skill though. AI can generate novel combinations. It can surprise us. What it can't do is care whether any of it matters, or feel the need underneath it, or attach meaning to it through a life of its own. That part is judgement. Intention. Emotional recognition. Lived meaning.
Understanding the emotional connection between people's desires, and connecting that with brands that meet them through creative ideation, innovation and fresh perspective. That's in our hands.
To every creative, marketer, or anyone in an adjacent discipline worried about their place in the time-space continuum: this is the part you need to remember.
This is your whitespace. I don't believe it gets claimed.
I was pretty scared of what AI would unveil (and I'm sure I'm not the only one). What it would metamorphose into. How fast it's growing, and where that would leave us. I'm not afraid anymore. I love it. I understand the length and depth of what these ever-expanding machines can offer us, and the trajectory is exponential.
What we hold on to is our humanness. Our ability to feel. The tangible experience of emotion, texture, taste, energy. Everything we've loved, lost, noticed, misread and survived. That's where the world of creativity resides. When the architecture of what we're building is human-led and machine-amplified, the effect is exponential.
No code to crack. We understand how people feel, what they want, need, desire. Brands that win are brands that get this. Teams that double down on this.
Human-led. Amplified by AI. That's the North Star currently in action.
A lot is changing in this world, pretty quickly. Change can be uncomfortable. Metamorphosis usually is.
"Dreaming aloud in technicolour" was never misaligned with my work. It was the source of it.
So I'm putting it back.
And I'll continue to dream aloud in technicolour.
