Big City Christmas

Manchester City FC Big City Christmas

Scoring a hat trick, Manchester City, one of the most high profile football clubs in the world, came back to Absolute for their 2017 retail Christmas campaign.

Sectors

  • Sport
  • Consumer

Services

Deliverables

  • Brand Campaign
  • Location Photography
Leroy Sane and Gabriel Jesus with Big City Christmas mug
Adarabioyo & Stones with Top Trumps

The idea

Everything about Man City is BIG and 2017 was no exception. The rivalry is as strong as ever between the city’s two Premier League teams so we really needed to create big impact with this campaign and let the world know that there are even bigger things to come.

The Absolute team came up with the idea of the ‘Big City Christmas’ - a super-sized Christmas that is an extravagant, colourful and playful take on a typical Manchester Christmas. We presented a number of campaign ideas for their marketing team to choose from and this was the clear winner.

The process started by creating the vision for the main campaign poster based on the marketing strategy with a briefing document to illustrate the art direction. Applied across a range of communication channels, from outdoor media to online and instore, we developed the full rollout with storyboards to bring the concept to life.

Moonbeam & Moonchester pulling a cracker for the Big City Christmas brand campaign
Mike Summerbee finds himself on the Big City Christmas campaign Monopoly board
Tosin Adarabioyo rolls the dice for the Big City Christmas campaign
The Big City Christmas brand campaign lead image

The delivery

Commissioning the manufacture of oversized props and featuring the City squad in festive jumpers available from the retail outlets, we re-enacted super sized games for some festive family fun. Recreating a big city scene for the backdrop, we used a variety of gift boxes in the City colour palette to create a skyline with a neon light typeface to bring the concept together.

The intensive day long photoshoot featured key retail seasonal products, members of the squad, the mascots and a ‘mini city’ children’s range to create a complete range of shots for the campaign. Absolute were responsible for all art direction, photography and videography and produced final finished artwork and video editing for all online and offline promotions, including POS and signage.

Campaign artwork was produced for the storefront of the City Christmas Store
Campaign graphics were produced for the Manchester City website
In-store digital graphics for the City store
A complimentary Mini City Christmas was produced to promote the children's Christmas product range