Luxury Hotels

The luxury Mandarin Oriental London Hyde Park auctions its cover-up

LONDON Advertising, in collaboration with Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, launches an online auction of 100 fragments of ‘Our Fans’ by Peter Blake – shown above, in January 2017 – to raise money for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO powered by the United Nations Foundation and Swiss Philanthropy Foundation and The Felix Project.

The mural, the size of 38 double-decker London buses, was designed to cover the façade of Mandarin Oriental, London Hyde Park, and featured 100 of the hotel’s most famous ‘Fans’. The famous-100 on the mural include Dame Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Annie Lennox, Bryan Ferry – and the two living Beatles, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Sir Peter was chosen as artist. The collage went up overnight on 17th January 2017. It was quickly shared, going viral to over 14 million social accounts worldwide. The mural was voted the ‘Best Creative in the World’ by the readers of The Drum, Europe’s largest marketing publication.

Girlahead did wonder what on earth would happen to the thing afterwards (did hotel RVP Amanda Hyndman store it in her cupboard?).  Well, it has reappeared.  LONDON Advertising had the idea to give the poster a ‘second life’ by auctioning it to raise money for victims of Coronavirus.  LONDON Advertising CEO and Founder, Michael Moszynski, in fact created the Fan campaign for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group 21 years ago. . Now, he says,  it seemed a natural fit to see what could be done with the ‘Mandarin Oriental Mural’ to help those who are most vulnerable.

LONDON Advertising collaborated with Sir Peter to supervise the cutting of the poster into 100 ‘fragments’ of each person’s face, typically 1.2m x 2m. He has signed each unique piece.  The auction is being conducted on the specialist art online auction house, Bidsquare, and will be live until midnight London time on June 26th, 2020. https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/mandarin-oriental/sir-peter-blake-our-fans-art-fragments-auction-5221

Jill Kluge, CMO Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, explains that MOHG is delighted to support this auction for a good charitable cause.