Man City celebrates its Premier League title.Manchester City FC
To celebrate Man City’s Premier League championship, a series of light projections took place Sunday night in each of the players’ home cities around the world. The projections, in 25 cities on three continents, were a surprise for players after they lifted the Premier League trophy at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday. Every player as well as Manager Pep Guardiola and his coaching staff, were represented in the projections, which began with an image of the team on Manchester Town Hall. Locations included a favela in São Paulo for Gabriel Jesus, a beach in Gran Canaria for David Silva and the site of Kevin De Bruyne’s first club in Belgium (Man City).
MORE THAN JUST A GAME: FAST COMPANY’s Jeff Beer wrote Man City, like all major professional sports teams, as a brand is “equal parts sports team and media company, investing heavily in content and digital strategy to push its crest far beyond Manchester city limits.” City Football Group CMO Nuria Tarre said that aside from the game itself, the team’s digital and content strategy is “probably its most important product.” Tarre said, “Our strategy is quite forward-looking. Not only do you have to understand the various platforms and how to use them, you also need to know how to tell the stories that will set the right tone.” Tarre said that the brand voice and personality have “been a bit more cheeky, trying to get its players out of their comfort zone.” Part of this is “shooting a lot of video content during training and around the clubhouse to bring fans inside as much as possible.” Tarre: “We want fans to get a real sense of the club, the payers and what goes on in training and elsewhere.” As teams invest more in content, “so too do their corporate partnerships expand beyond their kits.” Tarre said, “It’s fundamental to our business and reflects how brands want to engage with sports brands and football specifically” (FAST COMPANY, 5/5).
