Marketer
Don’t believe everything you see…
I was sitting at home one evening, having a glass of wine and playing the marketers game of thinking ‘if atom bank was a person, who would it be?’ It would be someone who lived in a digital world, someone who was social media savvy, someone that understood how technology could change industries and lives. For some reason Will.i.am came to mind. The more I looked into him the more obvious it was he was perfect.
Most people know him as a seven-time Grammy award winner but not so many people know that he is a visionary when it comes to how technology will change people’s lives. He has a global Artificial Intelligence Business, is a regular contributor to Davos and passionate about STEM and education.
To cut a long story short I pitched him the idea of becoming an advisor to the atom bank board and an investor. He loved the idea and we did the deal. I had flown into LA to meet with Will one Sunday and have a promotional photo shoot. I was detained in US immigration for five hours for having visited Iran so, not unreasonably Will shot his half of the photograph and went home. When I was eventually released, I went to his studio, where the photographic team took the half of the photo with me in it, then - at a later date – photo comp’d the two parts together.
I would swear we were both there at the same time but we weren’t.
He and I have become good friends over the subsequent years and I worked with him on the launch of FYI.AI. Here’s a photo (left) when we were actually together …