“The concept of Plastic Ono Band was ‘the message is the music’. So everyone on the recording is in it, everyone listening to the recording is in it, everyone who sings the song is in it, you’re in it and everyone in the world is in it” – Yoko Ono.
In March, John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s transformative and influential masterpiece Plastic Ono Band turned 50. To celebrate the anniversary of this momentous, genre-breaking album, we wanted to create an activation that recalled Yoko and John’s vision.
We wanted to materialise their concept in the modern digital world and allow fans globally to become a part of The Plastic Ono Band in an immersive and collaborative experience.
As a team, we had been closely watching the discourse around NFTs and the concept of ownership around iconic digital art. This concept seemed to slot into the notion of The Plastic Ono Band, so we set out to create a similar, free and environmentally conscious, experience.
We joined forces with LOUD to create an immersive website that allowed fans to claim a free pixel from the Plastic Ono Band artwork and leave a message that could be read by other users globally. We focused our messaging on the call to action ‘Join’ to create collective energy for users. Once fans had claimed their pixel and left a message, a unique John Lennon playlist was created in Spotify using their pixel as the artwork which was shareable on social. We also teamed up with Abbey Road Studios to create a new piece of wall art centred around the Plastic Ono Band artwork dissipating into pixels. The artwork had a QR code that fans could scan to take them to the website and join the experience.
We launched the site to accompany a newly remastered version of the album that increased the clarity of John’s vocals to emphasise the raw emotion of his songwriting; tracks from this were incorporated in the bespoke playlist fans received. The site gave the recordings a new angle to reach fans and ultimately aimed to increase streaming. Alongside this, we released a Spotify Deluxe Edition including bespoke, hand-drawn Spotify Canvases centring around the animation I Am The Egbert, written and directed by Sean Ono Lennon, complemented by Spotify Storylines drawn from Lennon’s own words.
We also hosted a Twitter Listening party hosted by Tim Burgess with an exclusive Twitter Spaces afterparty where fans had the opportunity to ask questions to icons surrounding the album including Sean Ono Lennon and Klaus Voormann.
The site saw over 15,000 users take part within the first day of it being live, with all pixels being claimed in 48 hours as well as 28,000 users in the first week.
The Spotify Super Deluxe was one of the first of its kind on the platform and this, as well as the bespoke custom playlists from the site, contributed to achieving 2.8m streams on the newly remastered album in its first week of release. The remastered album charted at #11 in the UK and we saw 17% growth in streaming for John Lennon’s deeper catalogue in this period.
Our Twitter Spaces had 5.4k attendees and garnered press from NME, The Express and Clash Magazine. The Twitter Listening Party is Tim Burgess’s thirdmost replayed, with over 33k listen-backs since it occurred.
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