Salvation, 1985 Ronald Reagan issues travel advisories in the US against Greece as a potential country for terrorist attacks. The risk of damage to our tourism is enormous. How would we stop it? George Lois, the most famous Greek-American advertiser known for his rebellious style and daring, takes on the task of pulling a snake out of its hole. He launches a grand campaign that destroys the directive. He found 37 stars with foreign names, from the Hungarian Za Za Gabor and the Jewish-Lebanese Nil Sendak to the Ukrainian Peter Ustinov, and made them say a simple phrase on camera: “It doesn’t matter where I come from. This summer I am finally returning home: to Greece!

The message was direct and effective. Our homeland, as the homeland of Western civilization, is the place where we all symbolically come from. Campaign failed, races skyrocketed, Lois was our savior. The day before yesterday, the advertiser who wrote his name in gold letters in America passed away at the age of 91. Hailing from the highlands of Nafpaktia, he grew up on the streets of New York, where he played every day in the Bronx with his Irish neighbors who laughed at him because he was Greek: block until I walked past his door of my house, ” he said to me.

This hardened him as a person and made him extremely proud of the country of his ancestors. In an interview he gave to K during the 2020 lockdown, you could see how much he loves us, but also how his unorthodox mindset was constantly generating ideas. He also made history with his covers for the influential Esquire magazine. They were so innovative for their time that today, five decades later, some of them could be “cut out” as politically incorrect: the boxer Muhammad Ali appeared in the image of Saint Sebastian with arrows in his body, President Nixon’s face was in the first frame of powder and lipstick lipstick, Andy Warhol seemed to be drowning in the tomato juice of Campbell’s soup. Perhaps the most shocking was the Vietnam War. Lois used only black on the cover, no image, so the soldier’s line stood out: “Oh my God, we just hit a little girl.”

Over 60 years of tireless work, Lois proved that inspiration cannot be tamed and should not be subject to restrictions, while he believed that large agencies that monopolized advertising space were killing freedom. He died shortly after his beloved wife, leaving behind his son Luke.