Visit Manchester | Winter Campaign
Client: Marketing Manchester
Project: This is Manchester and it moves you!
Location: Manchester, UK
Deliverables:
2 x 0:30s brand films for social and web. One voiceover led, one music led for international markets
15s cutdown in 1x1 4x5 and 9x16
81 stills for OOH, web and social
20 x 4K screengrabs
Dead Pixel did:
Ideation & Creative Treatment
Pre-production
Casting
Scouting and sourcing permits for 8 locations
1 day filming
Directing
Editing & grade
Photography & Retouch
Quote of the Shoot:
“How do we make this empty bar look like the place to be?"
The Brief
Unlike summer, where countless events drive tourism throughout Manchester, we were challenged with creating a campaign that promotes Manchester through the Winter months.
From the food, to the culture to the easy access transport. We needed to create a modern, social-first ad showing Manchester as a tourist destination.
Pre-Production
We began fleshing out a script that would help drive the narrative of this tourism brand ad. This was built on the original tag of
“This is Manchester and it moves you”
We wanted the scenes to have energy, movement and vibes that made you to visit the city.
Once the script was approved, we were able to develop storyboards and consider locations that would reflect the modern, dynamic city of Manchester. We appointed award-winning rapper, poet and DJ, Meduulla to lead the performance alongside a group of friends. This was intentional, tying in nicely with our Visit Manchester TV ad of earlier 2025.
We brought in a further 3 models who were genuine friends of Meduulla’s to feature throughout the ad.. We felt the dynamic of real friends was needed to feel authentic rather than a more traditional route of casting actors.
Once script and locations were signed off it was onto production.
Production
Filming took place over one jam packed day in September shooting across 8 different locations both interior and exterior.
Key locations included Piccadilly Records, Blues Kitchen, Canal Street, Chinatown and Salford Lads club.
We increased the numbers of assets for our client by shooting high end stills alongside the video. This way the models, locations and production value could be used to create content for out of home and social campaigns. We aimed for 20 lifestyle stills and managed to deliver over 80. Not bad.
Post-Production
The core deliverables was a 30s brand ad to help drive tourism to the city. We produced a script lead version for English speaking countries and a music lead (no voiceover) version for international markets. Each brand ad was delivered in 16x9, 4x5, 1x1 and 9x16.
On top of that we created a 15s paid media cutdown in 1x1, 4x5 and 9x16.
All edited and graded in house by the Dead Pixel squad.
Behind the scenes with Dead Pixel and Visit Manchester
