Putting Manchester on the World stage

Marketing Manchester is responsible for the promotion of Manchester. Each year, they and their partners deliver a calendar of activity to engage with key regional, national and international audiences. The Marketing Manchester team felt that there was an important opportunity to more fully articulate the scale of change and growth that Manchester has recently seen and is about to see.

Marketing Manchester came to us for our strategic understanding of their vision and creative ability to bring this story to life. Our brief was simple, to show the world that Manchester is a great place to work, live, study and invest at MIPIM 2016

We began by working with the client to pin down the key narrative threads that needed to run throughout the event. 8 story points were identified to capture the innovation happening across the city covering themes such as culture, science, tourism and connectivity. The scale of the challenge is best summed up by Iwan Griffiths, Chairman of Marketing Manchester:

“With the Greater Manchester devolution plan now underway, and the city’s recognition as European City of Science, 2016 stands to be one of the most important years in Manchester’s recent history. As a result, the partnership has a strong set of messages to bring to MIPIM this year, and our challenge is to ensure that we are able to get the most out of these.”

Once we had understood the story we were telling, we worked out a strategy for communicating across a series of moving image assets for a the focal point of the Manchester stand at MIPIM, a wall sized digital screen.

We needed to deliver digital collateral (films and animated info-graphics) that complemented Manchester’s ‘Original Modern’ positioning. In addition to the thousands of visitors to the stand over the week of the Expo, our work would be on show to the world via a live stream of every Manchester stand session.

Beginning by developing a consistent visual language and tone of voice, we designed and animated a suite of creative content to inform the audience about Manchester and activities on the stand. Short animated sequences featured event itineraries, key facts about the city and partner and sponsor information.

For the centrepiece to the Manchester story we created a punchy ninety-second movie, designed to encapsulate the city’s key points of difference, unique attitude and it’s opportunity as an environment for economic growth.

Inspired by urban poetry and the city’s architecture, our Manchester showreel used an innovative 3D technique to add depth and movement to still photography. The result was a vibrant celebration of the city’s sporting, educational, cultural and residential architecture.

We created content for 20 key partners, TV channel idents for every activity on the stand across the three days of the Expo, an identity for the city stand, a film of all developments in the city, and the centre-piece movie capturing all the key themes the Manchester Growth Company needed to convey.