Yoko Ono in discussion with Grey’s Tim Mellors
An icon of popular culture is, once again, the focus of the Annual Grey Music Seminar at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Yoko Ono joined Grey Worldwide CEO Tim Mellors on stage for a discussion exploring the relationship between music, art and advertising.
Speaking to Cannes Lions Daily before the seminar, Mellors said he believed Yoko was a pioneer both as an artist and a musician. “I think that the work that Yoko did in the early years, as an art form, could win prizes here,” Mellors said. “If you take the ‘bed-in’ for example, her and John getting in a bed in Toronto and Amsterdam and getting the world’s press around them, that’s exactly like the stuff I saw at the Media Lions.”
He said that the striking images of John and Yoko — in white clothes, under white bed linen, contrasting with her famous thick black hair and surrounded by posters daubed in black and white with slogans about love, peace and war — are still in our consciousness today, because they were simple. “If you think about it, ‘Give Peace A Chance’, or ‘Peace Now’, or ‘War is Over’, these are all slogans that are incredibly simple, and seem very easy.”
4 Comments
Poor old Tim had his work cut out for him with that old try hard.
Waste of an airfare.
See? Drugs can fry your brain. Freak show. Poor Tim. Poor Grey. ~ heidi
All the young dudes [apologies Mott] think experiential marketing is a 21st century invention; it’s not, it’s been around forever. In fact, before electronic media that’s about all there was to promote a cause. What John and Yoko did was combine experiential marketing and contemporary electronic/print media in a way like we’ve never seen before, but a million times since. So, whether Yoko was great, or not, well done Tim.
Heidi – Yoko’s pretty inspirational all around the world. So is her late husband. Yes, they did buckets of drugs. In my opinion it didn’t make them any dumber.