Tuesday, September 27, 2005

City, we're from Manchester.

Don't know if anyone has noticed any posters or billboards around the city at the moment, and admittedly I had seen these without realising they were directly related to City, but reading a report in The Independent yesterday it seems that we have launched an advertising campaign designed to promote City as 'Manchester's club'.
Unfortunately, I've not been able to get a link to or a picture of any of the adverts so far but the one I have seen shows a City blue background with the phrase 'Real Manchester' across the middle and 'This is our City' underneath.
Other slogans apparantly contain such phrases as 'Pure Manchester' or 'Greater Manchester'. City have denied their is any antagonistic intent towards United in the campaign stating the intention is solely to 'emphasise the intrinsic bond between Manchester City Football Club and the city of Manchester'.
And perhaps it is just a way of creating a bit of banter and stoking up cross-town rivalry as a response to accusations that there is a falling level of interest in football this season.
But, do we really need to embark on an advertising campaign which is basically promoting City as some sort of corporate brand? I don't see any real need to do this as surely we are not a product that needs to be sold or marketed to the masses as the fan-base (or target market if you like) is constant (and indeed growing naturally).
I'm glad there appears to be an element of humour in this particular campaign, but I must admit to being slightly worried about the future direction this could go in, especially in view of recent initiatives such as the piped in chanting which got short shrift at the Bolton game, and the other options the club are supposedly considering.

vote it up!

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