Manchester United continues its strategy of using local market content to connect to, engage with and grow the club’s fanbase with the launch of a new film series called ‘Wake Up the Red Devil’.
Creatively, the video series blends football with Manga and gaming within a narrative about an interplanetary football match.
The interactive spots are brought to life via an animated HTML5 site which captures the users’ data at different sections of the story.
The aim of the initiative is to increase the size of Manchester United’s database of fans in China and welcome more fans to the Manchester United family.
The campaign was developed in harness with the club’s creative agency in China Qumin and the narrative story was written in collaboration with Sina Sport’s football editor Chen Chi.
“The aim of the campaigns is to increase the size of Manchester United’s database of fans in China, and to welcome more fans into the Manchester United family,” said Qumin’s campaign PR release.
“Our latest campaign is fully GDPR compliant so we can use the data to optimise the campaign in realtime, while it was distributed across WeChat, Weibo, Email, ManUtd.com.cn, Sina Sports and Chinese app Toutiao to ensure the best conversion metrics.”
Comment:
The storyline behind these creatively compelling and fascinating films – which sees an alien empire arrive on Earth with a view to taking over the world via football and challenging the best human team – reminds us a little of both Space Jam and Samsung’s cinematic ‘Galaxy 11’ short film series for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
If only the Premiere League was quite so exciting this season.
Earlier in 2018 Manchester United was named as the most popular sports team in China across the digital space.
Statistics from key Chinese social media platforms WeChat and Weibo, combined with audience figures from match live streams and club websites and app data, suggests that Utd already has more than 107m Chinese supporters.
Surely a few more fans will follow after these films.
Links:
Manchester United
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https://www.facebook.com/manchesterunited/
http://www.manutd.com/en/Club/Sponsors.aspx
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Qumin
