Clive Dickens on harnessing the AI opportunity as traditional jobs go away

Unmade: media and marketing analysis

0:00

-27:48

Clive Dickens on harnessing the AI opportunity as traditional jobs go away

Tim Burrowes

Jun 04, 2025

Transcript

Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade.

Today, we talk to Clive Dickens, one of media’s innovators, about what he’ll be doing next.

To get maximum value from a paid membership of Unmade, sign up today.

Your annual membership gets you tickets to September’s REmade conference on retail media; to October’s Unlock conference on marketing in the nighttime economy; and to Unmade’s Compass end-of-year roadshow.

You also get access to our paywalled archive.

Upgrade today.

Clive Dickens unveils his plans for Meliora, something that’s a little more than a typical media consultancy

After some big digital roles at Southern Cross Austereo, Seven West Media and Optus, Clive Dickens launching a media advisory service seems a logical next step. Particularly when you factor in some big radio jobs in the UK along with proximity to some successful audio startups.

But Meliora appears to be a little more than your typical one-person, stay-occupied-until-something-else-comes-up advisory.

Dickens says that he’s recurited another five partners to eventually join the business, and in the meantime identified another 10 “associates” to fill the gap in the mean time.

He also plans an investment arm which will focus on startups, and additionally a creative IP fund to put money behind interesting creators.

Dickens expands on his plans in the podcast interview with Unmade’s Tim Burrowes.

He says: “They're not just investments. They're partners. The significant number are in the AI space. And we want to bring and leverage some of those products and services to our clients as well to help them unlock that AI value.”

The conversation also touches on his plans around media equity - working with media companies to offer distressed inventory in exchange for stakes in busiensses that need to build their profile. It was a model he successfully applied on behalf of Seven West Media with Airtasker.

And he says that his plan to invest in creative work is in part at least a response to the disruption being caused by generative AI. “In a world where there's going to be less traditional jobs because of gen AI, we wanted to invest in jobs that we believe only humans will be able to do.”