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Arthur Ted Powell
Arthur Edward (Ted) Powell (born 1947) is a British-born advertising art director, landscape/cityscape artist and printmaker living in Melbourne Australia. In 1999, he conceived and directed Ford Global Anthem, the Ford Motor Company's first global television advertising campaign. At the beginning of the 21st century, the commercial was believed to be the world's biggest advertisement.
Powell was born and raised in Neasden, a working-class suburb of London, the only son of an electrical engineer and his wife, a box assembler at National Cash Register (NCR) in Brent Cross. He was educated at John Kelly Boys' Technology College (now Crest Boys' Academy) in Neasden.
Powell studied Fine Art and Advertising Design at Ealing Art College in West London from 1963 to 1968. He was a student in Roy Ascott's experimental 'Groundcourse', a method as influential as it was unorthodox in its approach to teaching art. The radical curricula and behaviourist experiments at Ealing between 1961 and 1964 made it one of the most controversial art courses in the history of British art education.
While Powell was a student at Ealing, he worked part-time as a cel painter on the 90-minute Beatles' animated movie Yellow Submarine (1968), designed by Heinz Edelmann and directed by George Dunning. He was one of 'a team of mostly young, unsung artists [who] toiled away in rinky-dink offices in Soho Square, London, for nearly a year' 'working long …. shifts in the ink and paint department.' He mostly painted cels for Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Nowhere Man sequences.
After graduating, Powell worked as an advertising art director at Leo Burnett Worldwide London. In 1976, he migrated to Australia and was employed at various agencies in Melbourne, including the local office of US-based advertising agency JWT (J Walter Thompson) and later regional offices in Auckland, Taipei, Detroit, London and Bangkok. In his spare time after work and on weekends, he recorded life on the streets and city skylines from apartment and hotel rooftops in major cities in Australasia, Europe and America where he lived, visited and worked in artist sketchbooks. These sketches would become visual reference for future cityscape paintings. He returned to Melbourne in 2004 to paint full-time.
In advertising, Powell is notable for conceiving and directing the mammoth Ford Global Anthem advertisement for Ford Motor Company in 1999. At the time, it was believed to be one of the biggest television commercial productions in US advertising history, and one of the most widespread use of one commercial at one time by a giant advertiser. It was recorded as the world's first global media roadblock in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999.
Major brands were enamoured with music in advertising in the 1990s because of its ubiquity in consumer’s lives, and were aligning themselves with celebrity musicians, using them to endorse their products as a way of cutting through market clutter. As regional (Asia) and later international creative director of the newly-formed Ford/JWT Global Business Unit (1995-2004), Powell collaborated with Melbourne-based British songwriter and music composer Danny Beckerman (1948-2006) to conceive and produce six songs as sound tracks for Ford television commercials between 1995-1999. Four were recorded for JWT/Ford (Taiwan) and wider release in the Greater China entertainment market by two of Hong Kong’s Cantopop ‘Four Heavenly Kings’ (四大天王) as they were described in the Chinese-language media at the time: Jacky Cheung (Cheung Hok Yau, 张学友) recorded True Love (真爱, 1995, Polygram) and Farewell (拥有, 1995, Polygram). Andy Lau (Lau Tak Wah, 刘德华) recorded Darling/Because of Love (因为爱, 1996, Philips Records) and Love is a Miracle/Love is Mysterious (如此神奇, 1997, Philips Records). Hong Kong singer Sandy Lam (Kik-Lin, 林忆莲) sang Say Goodbye (我心仍在, 1997, Rock Records). Just Wave Hello (1999, Sony Classical Records) was recorded by Welsh soprano Charlotte Church as the soundtrack for the Ford Global Anthem television commercial. The song was simultaneously released as a single and lead track on her self-titled second album Charlotte Church in 1999.
Australia from an outsider's view became a major theme in his landscapes and cityscapes. His early style was representational and later became more experimental and abstracted.
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Arthur Ted Powell
Arthur Edward (Ted) Powell (born 1947) is a British-born advertising art director, landscape/cityscape artist and printmaker living in Melbourne Australia. In 1999, he conceived and directed Ford Global Anthem, the Ford Motor Company's first global television advertising campaign. At the beginning of the 21st century, the commercial was believed to be the world's biggest advertisement.
Powell was born and raised in Neasden, a working-class suburb of London, the only son of an electrical engineer and his wife, a box assembler at National Cash Register (NCR) in Brent Cross. He was educated at John Kelly Boys' Technology College (now Crest Boys' Academy) in Neasden.
Powell studied Fine Art and Advertising Design at Ealing Art College in West London from 1963 to 1968. He was a student in Roy Ascott's experimental 'Groundcourse', a method as influential as it was unorthodox in its approach to teaching art. The radical curricula and behaviourist experiments at Ealing between 1961 and 1964 made it one of the most controversial art courses in the history of British art education.
While Powell was a student at Ealing, he worked part-time as a cel painter on the 90-minute Beatles' animated movie Yellow Submarine (1968), designed by Heinz Edelmann and directed by George Dunning. He was one of 'a team of mostly young, unsung artists [who] toiled away in rinky-dink offices in Soho Square, London, for nearly a year' 'working long …. shifts in the ink and paint department.' He mostly painted cels for Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Nowhere Man sequences.
After graduating, Powell worked as an advertising art director at Leo Burnett Worldwide London. In 1976, he migrated to Australia and was employed at various agencies in Melbourne, including the local office of US-based advertising agency JWT (J Walter Thompson) and later regional offices in Auckland, Taipei, Detroit, London and Bangkok. In his spare time after work and on weekends, he recorded life on the streets and city skylines from apartment and hotel rooftops in major cities in Australasia, Europe and America where he lived, visited and worked in artist sketchbooks. These sketches would become visual reference for future cityscape paintings. He returned to Melbourne in 2004 to paint full-time.
In advertising, Powell is notable for conceiving and directing the mammoth Ford Global Anthem advertisement for Ford Motor Company in 1999. At the time, it was believed to be one of the biggest television commercial productions in US advertising history, and one of the most widespread use of one commercial at one time by a giant advertiser. It was recorded as the world's first global media roadblock in the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999.
Major brands were enamoured with music in advertising in the 1990s because of its ubiquity in consumer’s lives, and were aligning themselves with celebrity musicians, using them to endorse their products as a way of cutting through market clutter. As regional (Asia) and later international creative director of the newly-formed Ford/JWT Global Business Unit (1995-2004), Powell collaborated with Melbourne-based British songwriter and music composer Danny Beckerman (1948-2006) to conceive and produce six songs as sound tracks for Ford television commercials between 1995-1999. Four were recorded for JWT/Ford (Taiwan) and wider release in the Greater China entertainment market by two of Hong Kong’s Cantopop ‘Four Heavenly Kings’ (四大天王) as they were described in the Chinese-language media at the time: Jacky Cheung (Cheung Hok Yau, 张学友) recorded True Love (真爱, 1995, Polygram) and Farewell (拥有, 1995, Polygram). Andy Lau (Lau Tak Wah, 刘德华) recorded Darling/Because of Love (因为爱, 1996, Philips Records) and Love is a Miracle/Love is Mysterious (如此神奇, 1997, Philips Records). Hong Kong singer Sandy Lam (Kik-Lin, 林忆莲) sang Say Goodbye (我心仍在, 1997, Rock Records). Just Wave Hello (1999, Sony Classical Records) was recorded by Welsh soprano Charlotte Church as the soundtrack for the Ford Global Anthem television commercial. The song was simultaneously released as a single and lead track on her self-titled second album Charlotte Church in 1999.
Australia from an outsider's view became a major theme in his landscapes and cityscapes. His early style was representational and later became more experimental and abstracted.