Every day, David Pullan took a detour on his way to work, heading round the Mancunian Way,
then through a divided football city until he came out at the junction near Strangeways
prison and the old Boddingtons brewery. Then, he would look up to the billboard that, for
two weeks in July 2009, formed another landmark on Manchester’s cityscape.
He would find a place to park and as he walked over to get a closer look, he would be reminded
why he had made sure those three words of mischief — “Welcome to Manchester” — were
positioned high enough off the pavement to prevent Manchester United supporters from
defacing it.
“Every morning” Pullan told The Athletic, there would be socks filled with red paint
lying on the street at the bottom of the poster. “Overnight, the United fans would come down
with tins of red paint, fill up these socks and throw them at the poster to try to turn
it red. But it never properly worked.”
Pullan was the Manchester City executive who convinced the club that Carlos Tevez’s signing
was an opportunity to have a bit of fun at United’s expense. It was the banner that
came to symbolise City’s shifting ambitions at a time when they were still the new kids
on the block, in their first year of Abu Dhabi ownership and fighting to establish themselves
among the football elite.
It showed Tevez, a United player for the previous two seasons, in a familiar pose: arms outstretched,
with wild hair and jagged teeth.
Now, though, it was a sky-blue backdrop with a message that read as if the Argentine striker
was new to town or being introduced to the real Manchester, rather than the one, if you
understand the local rivalries and geography, that had a Stretford address and took a large
proportion of their support from neighbouring Salford.
Pullan, who was City’s chief brand and marketing officer, chose the location deliberately,
opposite the Manchester Arena, because it formed the border between the two cities.
The billboard was strategically positioned to face towards Salford. And it was so provocative
that even Garry Cook, the former CEO who was notoriously unapologetic and bold in his ambition,
was unsure at first whether it was a good idea.
“Garry didn’t want to run it because he felt it was antagonistic towards United fans
at a time when the whole Abu Dhabi ethos was to be respectful,” Pullan remembers “They
didn’t want to play that game.”
“I sat down with Garry and said ‘it’s tongue-in-cheek, it’s funny, it’s a way
of showing our fans that, despite all the changes and all the money coming into the
club, we still understand them and we still care about them. We aren’t being disrespectful.
It’s celebratory. Garry was persuaded that it wasn’t a negative thing to do. The fans
loved it.”
Pullan still has a framed picture of the News of the World’s back page showing the poster
in all its controversial glory.
It also led to publicity as far afield as Malaysia, Australia and the United States,
including an article in the New York Times asking whether City’s intention was to show
that Tevez had found a different city than – to quote - “the poseurish Manchester
represented by the nationally and internationally renowned United, who count more supporters
abroad than they do at home.”
The entire stunt — designed by Johnny Vulkan and Carl Johnson, co-founders of the New York-based
advertising agency Anomaly — cost £30,000. City even won a couple of awards for what
Pullan describes, on a return-on-investment basis, as “one of the most valuable pieces
of marketing ever.”
Yet nothing could have been more precious for City, in those early stages of their Abu
Dhabi-funded growth, than the sulphurous reaction of Sir Alex Ferguson.
For the previous 20 years, Ferguson had never bothered himself too much with the team from
the stadium he called “the Temple of Doom”. When he talked about United’s rivals it
was always Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea, even Leeds. City were an afterthought. But
no more.
The poster, he said, was “stupid and arrogant.” City were “a small club with a small mentality.”
Ferguson had bitten, big-time.
“It’s City, isn’t it?” he said. “All they can talk about is Manchester United.
They can’t get away from it. That arrogance will be rewarded. It is a go at us, that’s
the one thing it is. They think taking Carlos Tevez away from Manchester United is a triumph.
It is poor stuff.”
Ferguson’s reaction also led to a certain amount of unease behind the scenes at City.
“The fact it irritated him caused a bit of a wobble with the owners,” Pullan said.
“They didn’t want to take him on, head on. They didn’t want to make it out that
City was the future and United were the past.
“We weren’t trying to annoy Ferguson but the fact he allowed himself to get annoyed
by something so small tells you everything about the direction of travel at that time.”
When the two teams locked horns in the Carling Cup semi-final later that season, amid all
sorts of new tensions, the television commentator introduced the first leg from the Etihad with
the words, “Welcome to Manchester.
Tevez scored both City goals in a 2-1 win and ran to the touchline to taunt Gary Neville,
an unused United substitute. Neville, who had remarked in the media that United were
justified in not signing Tevez, responded by giving him the middle finger. Tevez would
later describe him as a “boot-licking moron” on Argentinian radio.
The tone was very much set.
Or, rather, it was set in Tevez’s first Manchester derby in City’s colours, this
time at Old Trafford, and another wild affair probably best remembered for Ferguson christening
the losing team the “noisy neighbours.”
Michael Owen scored United’s winner in a 4-3 classic and, within moments of disappearing
down the tunnel, Ferguson had subjected City’s chief communications officer, Vicky Kloss,
to the full “hairdryer” treatment, shouting in her face in the apparent belief that she
had been behind the “Welcome to Manchester” campaign.
Ferguson did not seem to care about an obvious hypocrisy given that, at the other side of
the stadium, a banner was permanently in place to mock the number of years since City last
won a trophy. United had even used a photograph of the “ticker”, as it was known, as part
of a membership drive in their match-day programme when City visited Old Trafford for an FA Cup
tie in 2004.
United could never claim the moral high ground, even in response
to City’s obvious cheek.