Troubled UK football giant Manchester United (It’s way off the Champions League places although still the highest-grossing UK club on £627m according to Deloitte) is reportedly hunting for its first “creative director.”
The lucky (or not) individual would have a decade or so experience in an agency or similar outfit.
Well there are plenty of resting creative directors out there – and probably quite a few who would abandon their current posts given the opportunity – but what exactly would they do? Supporters might say a director of football who knew a little about the game would be a better signing on the part of embattled vice-president Ed Woodward, who represents the owners the Glazer family in the north west of England.
Woodward was apparently booed and worse at Man U’s last home match (although they did win 4-0, albeit against bottom club Norwich.) While Woodward is rightly known for maximising commercial revenue, he’s blamed by the fans for signing over-priced/useless players. Quite how a creative director is going to help this we know not.
There are creative directors at all sorts of companies these days – fashion ones where they do behave quite like agency creatives, others like Alan Yentob at the BBC who mostly didn’t.
Most newly-appointed creative directors these days seem to be women. That would be pretty brave of Woodward (and the female in question.)
Pity they can’t bring back football legend George Best. Many, many years ago I was in a Manchester after hours club late one Friday night when Georgie showed up with a couple of loverrrrly girls and proceeded to get absolutely shit faced. Less than twelve hours later at Old Trafford, I watched him score a hat trick. What a guy… What a drinker. Later in life he had a liver transplant, then carried on drinking. When asked what he had done with all his money, he replied… “I spent it on fast cars, fast women and booze… The rest I pissed away.”
Now that’s “Creative!