Manchester City FC City Christmas Dinner

Kitbag are one of Europe’s leading online sports retailers, who pride themselves on delivering to consumers the best in sports clothing, footwear and accessories online, covering a multitude of sports from football to rugby, motor sport to basketball, NFL and much more. They’re licensed by some of the biggest clubs in the world selling 100% official products to the fans who love to follow their favourite teams.

Absolute were approached with MCFC’s ideas for a Christmas photo shoot with the City players. It had a tight deadline, but we never doubted that we could deliver the concepts in a such a short space of time. Taking the art directional cues from a favourite Weatherfield soap, Absolute built and staged a typical Manchester family Christmas meal for the players, who were sporting their festive sweaters.

Behind the camera, Joe Hart dons his favourite Christmas jumper

It was smiles all round with Jesús Navas at the photoshoot

Behind the camera, Bacary Sagna on form both on and off the pitch

The set was dressed and can be seen here with Mangala and Caballero in the background

Manchester City mascot, Moonbeam, loved the photoshoot

Santa’s little helpers

Preparation and timing was key in delivering a set design ready for the Manchester City’s players arrival. We liaised with food stylists, venue dressers and wallpaper suppliers. We also organised the lighting and composition of the room, the day before and on the shoot day to make sure it all went to plan.

The day itself had a lot of people doing their bit in a short space of time. City’s own media production team were documenting the day whilst we were creating a behind the scenes video piece. The team from Kitbag and City’s megastore made sure the right Christmas promotional products were positioned in the right places.

A sprinkle of Christmas magic

The final post production of the images and the editing of the video were also produced by the Absolute team. We created social media versions specifically for use on Instagram, Vine, Twitter and Facebook.

The campaign was then applied to the MCFC Megastore. The Club also sent out a communications message which resulted in media attention from the likes of Daily Mail and The Sun. The image was also posted via MCFC social media sites and finally, will be used for a corporate Christmas card that will be sent out by MCFC management team.