Meet SIMi: The Making of a Jamaican Digital Brand Ambassador
- Aug 1
- 6 min read
A behind-the-scenes look at how AI, design, and Jamaican identity came together to create the face of the SIIM ecosystem.
If you want to know where SIMi came from… the short answer is AI. The real answer is a month in Europe, twenty-five years of accumulated ideas, and a stubborn refusal to accept that every founder has to become a social media personality.
In 2023, my brother and I spent a month traveling through Europe. Amsterdam. Rome. Riomaggiore. Florence. London. Then back home to Jamaica. It was not a business trip. But like most good business ideas, it became one.
Everywhere I went, I kept noticing Jamaica. Not physically, but culturally. Jamaican music. Jamaican language. Jamaican style. Jamaican confidence. There were traces of home everywhere. It reminded me that Jamaica's audience is much larger than the three million people who actually live here.
Long before that trip I had already decided to relaunch my SIIM fashion line. By the time I returned to Jamaica, that single idea had become something much bigger.
Ideas cascade
It started with a concierge app. Then it grew into an ecosystem. Fashion. A travel memoir. An online game. Eventually a pepper spread. Every project connected to the next. Ironically, the oldest project became the core inspiration. My book, Gallivant, tells the story of a backpacking journey I took through Asia and Australia in 1998 and 1999. That trip planted the creative seed. Years later the fashion became the first visible expression of that journey. Everything else since then has been growing from that same root.
As our ideas multiplied, several friends and I formed a company. We called it The Higher Intelligence Agency, LLC and incorporated it in Florida. That decision came from a simple observation. Jamaica was never going to be our main market. Our audience is the diaspora. But it is also something we call Jamaica-philes. People who may have no Jamaican heritage at all, yet are deeply attracted to Jamaican culture. That community is enormous. Far larger than Jamaica itself.
Then we ran into a problem. Me. I have never enjoyed being on camera. People who know me know this. It has never been a secret. Unfortunately, modern marketing has different opinions. Founders are expected to be visible. People buy from people. Brands need faces. I understood all of that. I simply did not want that face to be mine every single day. Around that time I came across articles about Aitana López and Lil Miquela. They were virtual influencers. Entire digital personalities with audiences that treated them as if they were real.
That immediately made sense to me. I did not want an AI model simply because it was fashionable. I wanted a permanent brand ambassador. Someone who could represent our fashion brand today. Our game tomorrow. Our concierge app after that. Someone who would always remain on brand. I would always be the founder, and there are conversations that only founders should have. With Investors. On Strategy. Difficult discussions. Those still belong to me. But the daily conversations? The product launches. The storytelling. The introductions. Those could belong to someone else.
There were practical advantages too. She would always be available. She would never age. She would never change careers. She would never accidentally wander outside the brand guardrails, something that can often happen when brands depend on real personalities.
The idea was planted. Now we had to build her.
Birthing Process
This was early Midjourney Days. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was getting very strange “pixies” out of every prompt. So we hired a designer on Fiverr, based in Canada, to create the first version. Originally, she was called SIIMSIM. The first SIIM referred to the brand. The second SIM stood for simulation. Eventually we shortened it to simply SIMi because everyone found it easier to say.
Her appearance was a big deal. From the very beginning I knew she could not look generically Caribbean. I wanted her to look like she came from South St. Elizabeth, where part of my own family comes from. That probably sounds oddly specific until you understand Jamaica. I have cousins from a single set of parents where one sibling has pale skin, abundant freckles, light eyes and red hair. Another sibling has dark skin, brown eyes and kinky-curly brown hair streaked naturally with blonde highlights. Same parents. Same family. Entirely different expressions of the same genetic story. That is Jamaica. And I wanted SIMi to sit somewhere naturally within that spectrum.
EARLY TRIALS
a mixed race beauty with olive skin and bluish shaggy bob a mixed race beauty with silver hair and a serene smile a mixed race androgynous female with two tone hair a mixed race beauty with bleached hair wearing studio headphones closeup of a mixed race freckled woman with pale eyes and short aqua hair a mixed race freckled beauty with hazel eyes and septum ring
Our early concepts settled around medium brown skin, freckles and striking light-colored eyes. One thing was never negotiable. Her hair. It had to be aquamarine. Or teal. For years I have worn that color myself. It had quietly become part of my own identity. Now I wanted it to become part of the brand's identity as well.
The first finished image arrived in March 2024.
Fermentation
Then... nothing happened.
SIMi sat in a folder on my desktop, fermenting, for almost two years. I hadn’t changed my mind. The technology had just not caught up yet. Back then, creating a believable animated character meant commissioning expensive 3D work that I simply did not have the time or budget to pursue. Then, this year, commercial AI changed almost overnight. Suddenly it became possible to take a single photograph and produce a convincing talking avatar in minutes. The barrier disappeared. So, I dusted SIMi off.
The process turned out to be surprisingly simple. First, I cleaned the original high(ish) resolution image in Photoshop. The designer had somehow imagined SIMi standing on a beach, complete with grains of sand on her face. I assume that was the "Jamaica" part of the prompt.
Then I imported the cleaned image into HeyGen. I searched my house for the quietest room I could find and recorded my script using my phone and a lavalier microphone. I cleaned the audio in Audacity. Imported it back into HeyGen. Selected a voice with the right timbre. And pressed Play.
About ten minutes later I had a talking version of SIMi. She looked like herself, and spoke my words.
She still smiles a little too enthusiastically. Her teeth are perfect. Maybe a little too perfect. There are still occasional lip sync issues around certain sounds – Ms and Ps particularly.
But every month the technology improves. And that is the exciting part. Today she is a headshot. By the end of this year, she will probably have a full body. Soon she will be able to travel with us. Visit the places we visit. Introduce our products. Tell our stories. Become a familiar face throughout the entire Higher Intelligence Agency and SIIM ecosystem.
Ahead of the curve
To the best of my knowledge, there is currently no Jamaican consumer brand using a dedicated AI-generated brand ambassador in this way. If that remains true, SIMi may well become one of the country's first. And that matters to me. I have always believed that technology should allow small organizations to do big things. We are still tiny. But our ambitions are not.
The book. The fashion. The pepper spread. Runnin’ Belly (our game). The concierge app that is still waiting quietly in the wings. They all need someone to tie them together. That someone was never going to be me.
In many ways, SIMi gets to live the life I probably would have lived if I had chosen different paths. She has more freedom. More time to explore. More opportunities to chase curiosity. Perhaps I get to live a little vicariously through her.
Mind Yuh Mout!
There is one final advantage. My mouth has always had a habit of getting me into trouble. I speak my mind. I am a thoroughly unapologetic Gen-Xer. My off-camera conversations can be... spicy. And the worst thing about this time we live in, is that an ignorant opinion you held 5 years ago, immortalized on a social media post can be erected as an indelible portrait today despite subsequent years of growth, enlightenment and new opinions. As if you can never grow beyond old ideas. As if you aren’t allowed to make mistakes and move forward. Cho.
SIMi, thankfully, has no such problems. She will always stay on brand.
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