English National Opera

Repositioning Britain’s most accessible opera company

Brand strategy
Brand identity
Brand campaigns
Brand architecture
Brand assets
Brand guidelines
Brand activation
Brand guardianship
Signage and wayfinding
Marketing campaigns
Art direction
Tone of voice

Client

English National Opera (ENO) is Britain’s only full-time repertory opera company.

Brief

ENO’s brief to Rose was candid and to the point: ‘We should be the national opera company for everyone. Help us make opera more accessible’. But further to research, we discovered the key challenges lay in the perception and assumption that opera is elitist, expensive and sung in a foreign language. So ENO asked Rose to help them break down barriers and connect with the culturally literate audiences they should be attracting, but weren’t.

Solution

Rose transformed ENO’s brand strategy, focusing on making opera more accessible, then evolved ENO’s brand identity through clarifying that – at its core – opera is simply storytelling to music. To be more specific, some of the most amazing stories, from some of the world’s foremost musical storytellers. But if audiences don’t know the stories, they won’t make a connection with opera. So Rose drew inspiration from the publishing world, where the impact of a strong and simple cover design will engage buyers to pick a book up, but it’s the synopsis on the back, which clinches a purchase. Consequently, Rose designed all ENO’s marketing campaigns and brand communications to lead with a distillation of the musical stories (rather than a title only likely to mean something to opera aficionados).

Rose also commissioned and art directed bespoke imagery for more than 70 individual production campaigns, from many of the world's leading artists, photographers and illustrators. In addition, to challenge the preconceptions surrounding opera, Rose ensured every campaign execution highlighted that ENO’s operas are sung in English, with many tickets available for under £20 at every performance.

Results

Within three months post Rose relaunching ENO’s brand identity, traffic to their website had increased by more than 400%. In the year following the brand repositioning and brand identity, ENO enjoyed a 32% increase in box office takings, with 42.7% of audiences being first-time attendees, 29% being under 35, and a considerable increase in audience diversity across the majority of productions¹. To date, Rose has won nearly 50 major international creative awards for their work and collaborations with ENO, for brand identity, brand campaigns, marketing campaigns, posters, copywriting, photography and art direction.

¹ English National Opera Annual Reviews 2014–2017