Social sports publisher SPORTbible marked Cristiano Ronaldo’s move back to Manchester United with a giant billboard in Manchester Piccadilly train station aping the creative approach and copy of rival Manchester City’s infamous 2009 Carlos Tevez poster.
The outdoor poster ran in United’s signature red, showed Ronaldo celebrating and carried the simple copy line ‘Welcome to Manchester’ across the image was put up in the station (one of the busiest locations in the UK by footfall) for a week and was shared across SPORTbible’s social media channels (which boast a combined reach of 17 million).
The low latency ad response saw the OOH execution run on 27 August and followed a tumultuous few days of rumours as Ronaldo first looked to be leaving Juventus to join City before announcing he would instead rejoin the club where he first became a global star.
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The original 2009 Tevez billboard saw the ‘Blues’ seek to mock the ‘Red Devils’ when the Argentinian attacker and former United star joined City was reportedly originally conceived specifically to wind up legendary United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
On this day, exactly 11 years ago, Manchester City announced the signing of Carlos Tevez alongside this huge poster.
Sir Alex Ferguson was not pleased. pic.twitter.com/y4AuZFJ78Y
— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) July 14, 2020
It was swiftly followed by a ‘Trash Your Tevez’ shirt stunt campaign by Betfair.
Of course, multiple elements add up to building a business case for a player transfer – starting with on-pitch performance and running through social reach, plus ticket and shirt sales and if the latter is any yardstick then the financial investment side of the signing is off to a promising start for Manchester United.
According to LoveTheSales.com, Ronaldo’s shirt sold £32.5m worth of replica kits in the first 12 hours since his number seven shirt went on sale: making it the fastest selling shirt in Premier League history.
Since the shirt went on sale, there have been queues outside Old Trafford’s Mega Store as fans flocked to the ground in order to be amongst the first to have this season’s kit with Ronaldo’s name on the back.
Manchester United fans queuing outside Old Trafford to get their hands on their new Cristiano Ronaldo number 7 shirts! pic.twitter.com/Vr3AOStakC
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) September 3, 2021
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