In a local Lancashire derby day activation, Booking.com built a novelty holiday home exactly halfway between Manchester United and Manchester City’s stadiums, kitted it out in the team’s famous red and blue colours and then made it available to rent for one night only – on 14 January – to mark the game between the giants of the Premier League at Old Trafford.
For the second Manc derby of the 2022/23 Premier League season, the Amsterdam headquartered online travel agency positioned the 7x5m, one-bed ‘Half-and-Half’ home as ‘the ultimate overnight Manchester experience’ and its red and blue décor included a half-red-half-blue bed, plus red and blue toilet rolls, mugs and cushions and even red and blue garden gnomes.
Referencing the very first Manchester derby in 1881, the house was made available for rent for just £18.81 on its main hotel booking website and promoted through an integrated campaign spanning owned and paid digital, social and PR strands.
Following the rentable, ambient marketing stunt, the property was donated to Manchester Scouts for use at the Worsley camp.
“Whenever Mancunians travel the globe, often the first thing they are asked is whether they are a ‘red or a blue’. They are brought together by their love of football,” commented Booking.com Senior Vice President Matthias Schmid. “There’s a warmth and vibrancy in Manchester that is unrivalled anywhere else in the world. Even in rare circumstances of apparent division, there is always an underlying unity. Manchester is one, no matter which side you’re on.”
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The football initiative aimed not only to engage Manc fans in particular and football fans in general, but also to promote the wider Manchester’s tourism sector which, according to Booking-com, is worth around £7.9bn-a-year and which supports 94,000 jobs, with 119 million visitors a year coming to experience the city.
Booking.com was just one of several brands activating around the January Manchester derby and another notable example saw match broadcaster BT Sport’s socvcial media and DOOH initiative which gave fans an opportunity to paint the city either United red or City blue ahead of the game.
From 10 January, a BT Sport Twitter poll asked a loaded question to provoke a response from fans in the run-up to the derby – asking simply ‘Is Manchester red or blue?’
Manchester is…?
Vote below to turn the city red or blue ahead of Saturday's derby day pic.twitter.com/EEvsm6YoSD
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) January 10, 2023
The responses will fed into a huge digital out-of-home (DOOH) screen at the city centre Arndale Centre and a fleet of digital vans around the town which showed the results and providing citizens with an answer. The screen was updated daily to reflect the latest results and the poll eventually closed at 12:30pm on Friday – 24 hours before kickoff when the Arndale Centre screen and digital van displays declared whether Manchester is red or blue up until the final whistle of the game when the screens will be updated to display the victor of the fixture for the remainder of Saturday.
The broadcaster plans to replicate the campaign during major derby games through the rest of the season.
And the result….Manchester is red!
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