Launched in late July 2020 and timed to leverage the restart of the UEFA Champions League, Manchester City’s official technology partner Cisco rolled out a campaign called ‘Blue Moon’ promoting its Webex video conferencing brand via ?
Territory: UK/Global
Agency: Octagon & Milkmoney
Objective:
Like it has with many other companies around the world, Cisco Webex has played a critical role in connecting Manchester City and City Football Group’s coaches, administrators, players, fans, sponsors and stakeholders throughout the pandemic during 2020.
Cisco Webex has helped City Football Group’s teams and staff around the world connect on a daily basis: from holding video meetings and running remote training programmes, to hosting virtual viewing experiences, summits and fan town hall meetings.
So the brand’s marketing team tasked its agency to place its Premier League club partnership at the heart of a campaign showcasing the benefits of its virtual conferencing technology to demonstrate proof of purpose and drive consideration.
Activation:
Agency Octagon’s solution to the brief was a campaign based around bringing together distanced City fans from all around the world and unable to attend games in the stadium all singing the club’s famous ‘Blue Moon’ anthem together recorded and produced via Webex technology.
The activation was launched in late July and timed to leverage spiking interest around the team due to the climax of the Premier League and the early August return of the UEFA Champions League which saw the club play a last-16 game against Real Madrid.
The campaign was spearheaded by a two-minute hero film featuring a group of global City fans, as well as well-known celebrity supporters Jason Manford and Ricky Hatton, plus women’s team stars Steph Houghton and Jill Scott, alongside former men’s team stars and current club ambassadors Micah Richards and Joleon Lescott.
The central video ran across both club and sponsor online platforms and was supported by a shorter, 30-second promo in the immediate build up to Real Madrid game on 7 August.
Additional supporting content was led by a further online film showing City players as they react to the heartfelt message from their fans.
Promoting its virtual conferencing technology, the Cisco initiative was developed by agency Octagon and its sister production company Milkmoney and seeks to act as a show of support from the fans to the City players.
The campaign is only one strand of club operations to have been run on Webex.
Other recent City and Cisco Webex collaborations have included a series of Webex hosted ‘Watch Together Parties’ which allow fans to virtually recreate the camaraderie they normally experience on a gameday via the official Manchester City mobile app, while the pitch-side Cisco LED signage has included a giant ‘Wonder Wall’ which brought fans into the stadium via Cisco Webex to cheer on their team, plus Cisco Webex hosted the 2020 iteration of the annual Cityzen’s Giving Young Leaders Summit which virtually brought more than 250 young leaders from 23 cities around the world together via Webex to share learnings in community football, participate in valuable discussions, and engage in fun collaboration.
“Over the past several weeks, Cisco Webex has played a critical role in connecting Manchester City and City Football Group coaches, administrators, players and fans during this challenging time,” said Brian Eaton, Director of Global Sports Marketing at Cisco.
“Our goal has always been to create connections to bring joy, engagement and new experiences to the entire ecosystem of people involved with this legendary football club. We will keep working together to forge new opportunities through technology.”
“At Manchester City we are always looking for innovative ways to engage with our global fanbase and have a positive impact on communities around the world,” said Nuria Tarre, Chief Marketing Officer at City Football Group.
“Working with Cisco has enabled us to create virtual connections between the Club and our fans which is even more valuable at this time when we are not able to be together in person. We are committed to harnessing the latest technologies to create exciting experiences for our fans and look forward to working with Cisco to explore this further together.”
“There are very few clubs with an anthem like ‘Blue Moon.’ When you hear it sung by lots of voices together, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end,” said Ryan Shaw, Creative Director at Octagon UK.
“We know everyone’s missed singing it, and hearing it. With this video we wanted to remain as true as possible to the experience at a live game – that is, starting the song with one fan, before building up to a stand full of voices. Thanks to Cisco we were able to give Manchester City fans their voices back at a time when it’s been taken away, and use technology to connect people in a meaningful way.”
Outcome:
Since the campaign launched in 24 July, the campaign’s social films gave generated more than 2.6m views.
On City’s YouTube channel the hero, 120-second spot notched up 1.1m views, while the supporting film generated a further 856,878 views (with the campaign leading to 200k views on the club’s Instagram feed, 130k on Twitter and another 130k on Facebook).
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