Heritage Chooses the Future

In one afternoon at the Singapore Old Parliament, I moved from AI x art to brand reinvention, timeless brand craft, the price of trust and danced to Rick Astley being reminded that boring doesn’t sell.

I even sat in Lee Kuan Yew’s seat for a second, as a reminder that nation-building is brand-building at scale: refuse small ambition, choose clarity, keep moving. If you lead brands, expect a practical lens on how heritage, human judgment, and designed attention can move you forward. What follows is a fast tour of the sessions that shifted my thinking.

Heritage as a decision tool: Use legacy to choose the future, not to preserve the past

Tom Child, House of Brands Director, JLR, framing resonated deeply with me: heritage equals the ability to endure change. Having led global brand and digital channels at Standard Chartered, a 170-year brand, I have learned to reinterpret history rather than reproduce it. My rules: choose clarity over consensus, prove small then scale, and ask if the choice honours our legacy while making tomorrow unmistakably clearer.

Why it matters now: heritage is not a museum rope; it is a decision tool for the next chapter.

AI + Art opens new worlds: Culture meets acceleration

Wenhui Lim, Artist and Designer, Niceaunties, showed how familiar cultural archetypes, amplified by AI, become fast and meaningful storytelling. The tension between human craft and machine speed is not a problem. It is the spark that creates new icons and invites new audiences.

Try this: run a 2-week sprint to create 3 AI-assisted variations, add one human edit, test with 10 users, publish the winner.

What AI cannot do: Keep humans in the loop where it matters

Peter Dixon, Executive Creative Director, Prophet, and Laurence Liew, Director of AI Innovation, AI Singapore, made a simple point: AI can scale exploration and lift the floor on first drafts, but it cannot do judgment, taste, ethics, or lived context. My reflection is to keep human checkpoints at brief → concept → green-light, labeling AI-assisted work internally and protect a strong point of view so the brand sounds singular rather than statistically average.

Guardrail: design for human judgment at the highest-risk moments.

The mindset of challenge: Human plus Machine as operating philosophy

Jon Stona, Vice President, Global Marketing, Airwallex, framed this era as the fifth industrial revolution: Human × Machine. Let AI handle grunt work so people focus on judgment, relationships, and creativity. Default to instrumented experiments. Measure velocity to value, not volume shipped. Reskill on purpose so teams can brief AI well and critique outputs even better. This complements my word of the year: orchestrator (more on that another time)

Metric shift: track how fast ideas become value.

Back to brand basics: Foundations still win and boring still loses

David Aaker’s message aligns with my Interbrand training: distinctiveness, consistency, and emotional truth compound. Foundations are not permission to play safe. As Maz Farrelly, International Keynote Speaker, Max Speaks Global, says, boring does not sell and dull costs dollars. Script the first 30 seconds to hook attention, then let proof and craft carry the message.

Discipline: design your opening line as the hook to get people to say “tell me more”

The price of trust: Build safety and transparency into the journey

Tracy Hall, International Keynote Speaker and Author, Tracy Hall Consulting, spoke about scams and recovery. As a cyber-crime victim last year, this hit home. Three moves I am taking forward: keep financial agency with the user, normalize reporting to remove shame, and design journeys with survivor insight. Trust is product.

System design: add smart friction where risk is highest.