City Christmas Dinner

In 2015, we were working on a Chelsea FC project for Kitbag (now Fanatics) when we were asked to help out on a photoshoot for Manchester City. The marketing team wanted to create something different for their Christmas retail campaign, and they had something in mind, but needed some help to realise the vision.

City have always had their own way of doing things, it’s in their DNA. They’ve been labelled as ‘The Noisy Neighbours’ by their fiercest rivals. The fans can often be seen doing ‘The Poznan’ when celebrating their teams’ goals. And even when things haven’t gone down too well on the pitch, or with the club, they’ve countered this with their very northern Manchester wit, which is where the first idea comes in.

Think Coronation Street, with flying ducks on Hilda Ogden’s living room wall, and a festive dinner that looks like a disaster that’s just waiting to happen, with Mike Summerbee looking like the dad who’s had enough of the boisterousness of everyone around the table. That was the vision, and we stepped in to make it a reality. We even had our MD, Chris Hodgen, wallpapering the set build that morning. Nice!

A Festive Face-off

Following the success, and media coverage, of the previous years’ campaign, we were invited back to create something completely different for Christmas. This year Manchester City wanted to promote their festive gifts with a concept worthy of a blockbuster movie, so that's what we delivered.

Around this time, there were quite a few superhero movies being released that pitted our favourite characters against each other, like Batman vs Superman from DC, and Captain America Civil War from Marvel. This influenced the concept for our campaign, with Team Santa, led by Kevin De Bruyne, and Team Elf led by Vincent Kompany. We were also lucky enough to get the highly rated, new manager of City, Pep Guardiola, involved in his first season at the club.

From initial concept through to final delivery of the campaign, the project had plenty of memorable moments, and it required a lot of planning to make it happen, even though it didn't run as smoothly as we'd liked, especially as the first shoot was on the same day as one of Manchester's worst storms!

That aside, all the challenges that the project posed were worth the effort put in by the Absolute team, all the production crew and the City squad. It was a successful campaign, in terms of fan engagement, merchandise sales, and national media coverage. A great result.

Big City Christmas

How do you follow a blockbuster campaign? Well, you go even bigger of course. And quite literally we did, with our biggest ever set build for Manchester City.

The club wanted to focus more on the festive gifts for this years’ campaign, so we suggested making supersized versions of them. Cue a large Monopoly, Top Trumps, Guess Who, and Mike Summerbee in a gigantic cup. We also built the Manchester skyline out of wrapped gifts.

It’s always tricky when you photograph a group of people, especially when you want each person to be in a particular pose in that split second camera capture. It’s even more difficult when various media, including the team from Soccer AM, are invited down the the shoot, along with all the usual City entourage. It adds more complication to an already challenging day, but we managed to pull it off, unlike Gabriel Jesus and Leroy Sane trying to pull a giant cracker!

A City Wonderland

Creativity is always the vital thread throughout our process, but it’s the craft that’s always key when delivering a memorable campaign. And this years’ concept had craft in abundance.

We’ve been to several creative industry talks and exhibitions over the years. And a few years ago, we’d attended one particular event that had been organised by a leading paper merchant, which featured a brilliant paper cut artist called Helen Musselwhite. Her talk focused on the process of her craft, creating magical illustration models and sets for clients that were usually made at miniature scale, and this really resonated with us, especially with the amount of handcrafted intricacies that went into her work.

Once we’d agreed on a paper cut concept with City, we approached Helen with our idea. The only difference to her normal commissions is that we wanted to go big, and create a huge set build, in a month. After she picked herself back up off the floor, she agreed to the challenge. It’s amazing that she managed to complete the project in her tiny home studio, so as you can imagine, her house was littered with giant paper cut flora and fauna for a month.

When you create a set build it’s easier for the players to understand the context of the idea, rather than standing next to a green screen. They can interact better with their surroundings, and from our point of view, it reduces the amount of post production that’s normally required. The set wasn’t wasted either. It was used to dress up the City Store over the festive period, then recycled later, with some pieces kept in our studio to remind us of the craft.

City Makes Christmas

Each year, we present several initial concepts for discussion with City, and one particular idea about creating a Santa’s Workshop kept resurfacing, so we decided to explore it further.

The new kit launch this season paid homage to Manchester’s industrial past, and we wanted to build on that idea. Instead of Santa, we portrayed Mike Summerbee as a foreman at City’s very own Christmas gift workshop, where we built a large scale factory conveyor belt with players helping to create, pack and wrap presents for their faithful fans, as they moved along a production line.

The concept encapsulated the Manchester wit once again with the boisterousness nature of the players, and the chaotic scenes of them messing up the production line with their usual antics. We even tested their mental agility by setting up a conveyor belt full of gifts for them to memorise, which harked back to an old Saturday evening TV show called ‘The Generation Game’ hosted by Bruce Forsyth.

Magical City Christmas

This particular year was more memorable for a certain global pandemic and the restrictions placed on everyone to keep the virus from spreading. Fans weren’t allowed in stadiums. Players and staff were regularly tested. But the football world wanted the show to go on.

Despite all the chaos that surrounded the pandemic, most people wanted the festivities to continue, and City wanted to spread a bit of Christmas cheer. It just meant that we had to be a bit more creative with how we could deliver their seasonal campaign. No set builds. No getting near the players. And no touching of the gifts and toys.

The concept was simple. On the pitch, Manchester City players are magicians. Christmas is magical and should feel that way. Together, it’s a magical combination.

We art directed the players from afar. We had gifts floating in our studio. And we even photographed a levitating dog, who is owned by our MD, Chris. We even threw in a sprinkle of Disneyesque stardust to bring the campaign to life. Now that’s truly magical.

This City Loves Christmas

The club ran a ‘Love This City’ campaign earlier in this year, where they wanted to hear the fans stories about football, incredible goals, the trophies, and the exceptional players. And they were keen to continue that theme throughout the festive period.

As the campaign idea was fully football focused, we had the challenge of putting a Christmas spin on it, so we came up with the idea of positioning the players in their normal match day environments, with a subtle, yet playful aesthetic. Alongside these key images, we created a bespoke ornate typeface which was complimented by flowing gifting ribbons.

With each festive campaign, we’ve tried to give the art direction a completely different feel so that it didn’t look like a repeat of the previous ones, and we felt like this one definitely had a higher quality to it.

A Time For Giving

What we haven’t mentioned up until now is that every year, as part of the festive campaigns, Manchester City donate a percentage of their retail sales to selected charities, alongside all the great community initiatives that they’re involved in. So, for this year, they wanted to lead with the charitable theme of ‘A Time For Giving’ which also had a gifting message to it too.

The club had just gone through a brand development exercise to create a bold new style that was unique to City, rather than looking like every other football team. Additional vibrant colours, with a set of glyphs and club patterns were introduced. We took these design cues and developed them further, with a Christmas spin, of course.

As we’d mentioned earlier, each year we try to give every campaign a fresh new look, and this was a complete shift change from anything we’d previously produced. The patterns gave the City marketing teams a flexible campaign toolkit to use across all digital platforms, and throughout the retail stores. And wherever you saw the ‘A Time For Giving’ symbol, you could donate to ‘City in the Community’.

The Greatest Season Of All

Our last Christmas campaign for City came off the back of their most memorable treble winning achievements. And we would be crazy not to celebrate something that may not ever happen again.

The festive period is arguably the greatest season of the year, so it made perfect sense to tie it into City’s on-field successes too. And for all the devoted fans, they could continue to celebrate a monumental year. So we decided to recreate the iconic Manchester City Trophy Parade, but instead of the downpour of rain (which didn’t dampen everyone’s spirits), we substituted it for more seasonal snowy affair.

The campaign needed an identity, and what could be more fitting than a triple crown, crown to cap things off? The club also wanted us to continue with the patterns and glyphs that we created for the previous years’ campaign, so we went bigger and bolder with the art direction. We also introduced more animation and video to bring the campaign to life. We also threw in a polar bear, penguin, and reindeer, all wearing City merchandise. Does that make it the greatest City Christmas campaign of all? Maybe.

As you can see from all the Christmas campaigns we’ve created with Manchester City, it’s been a truly memorable journey, and an Absolute Joy to be a part of.