John Good - Grange Park Opera Season Brochure

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Grange Park Opera Season Brochure

Grange Park Opera is a major player among in the great tradition of British Summer opera country house festivals. Productions are world class, often with performers of global renown who take to the stage at the brand new purpose-built #TheatreInTheWoods nestled on the grounds of the impressive West Horsley Place stately home in leafy Surrey.

The annual Season Brochure is Grange Park Opera’s primary print assignment to reveal the new season to its discerning audience, both returning & prospective. The job is meant to entice opera visitors, help them pick the shows they plan on attending & of course purchase tickets; we also facilitate the mailing to over 5,000 recipients. Furthermore, the brochure sets the tone for subsequent print jobs throughout the Summer season.

As Grange Park Opera receives no government funding, balancing budget constraints while still remaining sophisticated to reflect the understated luxury of the Grange Park opera experience is paramount.

Grange Park Opera’s Marketing Manager, Rebecca, was visiting our Rugby facilities for a “press-pass”, and while rummaging our archive noticed a layflat bound brochure with a metallic spine tape adorning the cover and a ribbon bound into the spine. She immediately thought the concept would work well for her next Season Brochure and wondered whether we could help her emulate the look and feel.

The brochure concept was quite expensive so our Client Services Manager, Steve, who partner’s Rebecca on all her jobs, put on his thinking cap. We suggested a compromise by way of a traditional PUR bound brochure, with a metallic spine tape to conceal the hinge. The colour and finish of the spine tape was also chosen to match the copper foiling on the front cover. It was important that we coordinated well, so we made sure that Rebecca had swatches of the foil and of the spine tape, so that we were in synch. Together, the foil & spine tape complemented each other perfectly, exuding the elegance Rebecca was after.

Rebecca also wanted to brochure to have an “earthy”, quite natural feel to coincide with the opera house’s rural setting, so specialist environmentally friendly stocks were required.

We sourced some 100% recycled uncoated stocks that had a speckled look that would match Rebecca’s vision and negotiated a paper price that would favour the budget so that we could pass on savings to Grange Park Opera. When the artwork was submitted, we noticed that the brochure’s copy even made mention of the green credentials - and why not?

Despite the premium specification, we managed to reduce the unit cost by £ 0.02, which was a success especially given the number of paper-price increases from the year prior and additional finishing required.

Within 3 months of ticket going on sales for the new season, the brochure had helped 9,000 seats to be sold across the season.

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