Cut to nearly 70 years later – to interactive theatre involving being served by Basil Faulty, Ophelia drowning in a swimming pool and Stewart Lee cavorting in a meat mask – and their mission can certainly be pronounced a success. 

Come this August, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe will attract around 26,000 acts taking part in roughly 3,000 shows. And other similar spring/summer events, such as this month’s Brighton Fringe, are now popping up across the rest of the UK and indeed globe. Appetite for the alternative, or downright unhinged, has never been so strong.

Which, as anyone who’s ever walked down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile during Fringe season will tell you, is great news for print. Attracting punters’ attention and ensuring they come to your show rather than one of the other 3,000 on offer has never been so tough. So a good flyer and poster are still vital tools.

“What we’re finding at this stage is that although digital communication has grown, it’s grown alongside print marketing,” says Neil Mackinnon, head of external affairs at Edinburgh Festival Fringe.“The flyer still constitutes a key piece of marketing because what tends to persuade someone to go to a show is what people in the show say about it and their engagement with that member of the public as they hand them the flyer.” 

Posters are of course also key, creating, when plastered to every available Edinburgh city centre surface, one of the most iconic Fringe images.

“Particularly with comedy, posters are crucial in raising the profile of individual acts,” says Mackinnon. “When you think about it, stand-ups don’t initially seem to have much between them; it’s all pretty much a man or woman standing on stage with a microphone. So if you want to stand out you need to do that with a poster.”

Mackinnon confirms that appetite for Fringe-esque events, or similar city-based arts festivals, is on the rise.  

“Anecdotally we’ve seen the Edinburgh Fringe double in size every decade,” he reports. “There are more and more springing up in places like Manchester and Buxton, and including things like the Leicester Comedy Festival. I believe there are a group in the process of setting one up in Leeds.”

All offer a strong opportunity for local printers. “Traditionally in the summer months it goes rather quiet for us, so this is a nice filler,” says Andi McCann, partner at Cann Print, which has been targeting Fringe work since 2005 and now caters for around 100 acts each year, a respectable 3% of the total performing.

Profile booster

Gemini Brighton has been printing for Brighton Fringe for 10 years as official sponsor and is now exclusive print partner. This doesn’t just bring in some welcome early summer work, but boosts its profile for the rest of the year too, says group sales director Mark Tulley.

“We’re the biggest printer in the Brighton area but before partnering with the Fringe we felt our profile didn’t really reflect that,” says Tulley. “It’s the third biggest fringe festival in the world so this gives us enormous local coverage.”

Of course still not every city has a Fringe or arts festival. But this is apparently less and less of a barrier to getting involved.

“For years our Edinburgh store in Tollcross used to do rather well, but we observed Fringe publicity starting to go through many local Printing.coms,” says Tony Rafferty, chief executive of Printing.com and author of recently released book Web2Print MD2MD. “If you hail from Leicester you’re now quite likely to get something in place in advance.”

Rafferty attributes this to most consumers-come-Fringe-performers now having a much more online-savvy, shop-around mentality. “Maybe once upon a time, if there was a national deal available for the Edinburgh Fringe, everyone would follow suit and order from the nominated supplier. Maybe today people are more likely to find things online themselves,” he says.

The story of attracting Fringe and local arts festival work becomes, then, one of good practice in attracting B2C, or in this case B2P (performer), work in general. The sorts of people performing at festivals span a whole gamut – from professional theatre companies falling firmly into the B2B camp, to amateur one-man-bands – but much of the work most would-be Fringe printers will be positioned to attract will fall into this less experienced category.

For this market search engine optimisation is key. “Googling’s becoming more granular. Search on an iPhone or iPad and Google now more often adds the location and you see more local printers appearing,” says Rafferty. “And yet MD2MD’s survey showed the vast majority of printers are doing little or no SEO. Which is worrying; you may not build a multimillion-pound online business over night but if you get one order a day through improving your SEO that’s in the order of £25,000 of extra revenue per year.”

“Those wanting to do this kind of drop-in work need to offer ‘same day printing Leicester’ or ‘same day printing Bristol’, telling people ‘order online and you can pick the print up from our lovely shop,’” he adds.

Of course, ordering online less and less involves the print being picked up from a “lovely” bricks and mortar shop. Much lovelier for most people these days is to quickly order online, as consumers are used to doing for most other purchases, and having the print delivered to wherever’s most convenient.

Suddenly printing for Fringe events becomes, then, even more
of an opportunity for all. Not only
are performers now more likely to order from their home, or perhaps university, towns, and then take the print with them. They’re also much more likely to order in a way that renders the printer’s physical location irrelevant. 

Batching expertise

Take the case of Out of Hand Scotland. The company is one of Edinburgh Fringe’s featured listing printers and now works with around 350 performers each year despite its print facilities being 400 miles away in Cardiff. More important than having a high-street or even local presence, says the company, is having the capacity and efficiency to turn around short-notice orders, and the expertise in batching smallish runs.

“This work is basically a batch printing dream,” says Nigel Muntz, commercial director at Out of Hand. “Our standard turnaround is three working days, but if people are really stuck we can offer a 24-hour digital service. We absorb the delivery costs because generally stuff for the Fringe needs to go at the same time so our vans just batch and pallet it.”

With this in mind, a strong web-to-print system becomes key. This is certainly Tony Rafferty’s feeling. 

“Five or six years ago the Fringe market belonged to local print shops including Printing.com and a myriad of independents. It was those local artists walking through the doors and saying ‘I don’t know much about print but here’s a photo of me from the Hay-on-Wye festival’,” he says. 

“But the market is now completely split 50-50 between those independent performers who still gravitate to the local print shop and those who do the whole thing online.”

Whichever camp customers fall into, the most prized quality printers can offer Fringe performers, after competitive pricing, is, apparently, help with design. 

“The crazy thing is clients tend to buy the most expensive design templates because they buy the ones that will help sell more tickets,” says Rafferty. “It’s part of our Printing.com mantra that good design sells print and that rule has continued into the online environment.”

Even more so than for B2B web-to-print, it’s key these online design templates are easy to use, with parameters that make designs hard to transform into clip- and word-art-heavy monstrosities.

“People often turn up with no artwork at all, perhaps a few pictures taken on an iPhone,” reports Gemini’s Tulley of the average Fringe customer’s nascent design skills.

What Tulley’s description suggests, is the still high value placed on hands-on, in-person support. The situation is, then, perhaps a tad more complex than setting up strong SEO and consumer-friendly web-to-print, and watching the orders flood in.

For Out of Hand, some sort of local presence is still key. The company works with an on-the-ground reseller responsible for helping performers with design, marketing strategies and distribution, and for enlisting the help of venues to promote Out of Hands’ services.

“Distribution is certainly an important thing performers need help with. The Fringe organisers do suggest they actually go out for a few hours each day themselves, but obviously they’ve got a lot on,” says Muntz, adding: “Quite a few performers aren’t used to the marketing side as well; how many flyers to print, where to put them, etc.”

He adds, though, that actually it’s just the reassurance that there’s someone on hand to help in case of unforeseen problems, that makes an on-the-ground presence key. 

“Most important to people is reassurance that there will be someone who can help deal with any problems when they get there,” says Muntz. “We haven’t targeted other Fringes yet but events like Brighton and Camden are definitely on our radar. But we wouldn’t do that without resellers on the ground. It’s a bit arrogant not to have that.”

McCann, whose company is located seven miles from Edinburgh city centre, agrees that a local presence is still important for many. “I have sometimes found that people don’t really want to deal with businesses outside of Edinburgh,” he warns. “And I tried to get involved with the Camden and Brighton Fringes and found it very difficult because of my location.”

And even printers who have strong SEO and a reassuringly local presence, will need to think creatively about how to attract this specific kind of client’s attention. This, perhaps, is where your average Fringe act differs slightly from the average consumer. In courting budding thesps, creativity is apparently key.

“I think printers of all sizes can get involved, but you have to embrace the event to get the most out of it,” says Gemini’s Tulley. “For example, at the Fringe launch at the Brighton aquarium, we turned up with an artist who produced silhouettes cut out with scissors and then we put them into a personalised wallet from Gemini.

“We’ve had five people who were given silhouettes contact us about other printing work,” he continues. “You’ve got to be a bit creative, you can’t turn up with just a few pop-up stands and monopolise the event as some sort of corporate entity, you need to go along and embrace the ethos behind the event itself.”

Like Out of Hand, Gemini also channels plenty of marketing effort into working with Fringe venues. “We’re participating in workshops run by the Fringe for the participants and venue holders,” reports Tulley.

Competitive streak

Edinburgh city centre-based, three-staff-strong Dupliquick has another nifty marketing trick up its sleeve. The company has been running a poster design competition, the
Zebra Award, for 10 years (see box-out), which is a great way, says owner Stuart Robertson, of encouraging prospective customers Dupliquick’s way.

“The prize is £250 cash and £250 free printing,” says Robertson. “We tend to get first dibs on printing the jobs of entrants because a lot of the time they haven’t actually got their print done yet.”

So while getting involved with Fringe printing may seem a savvy move in insulating a print business from that dreaded summer lull, there is certainly plenty to consider. 

Certainly the motley creative crews now arriving in increasing numbers come festival season present a lucrative market. And the explosion of e-commerce does mean printers can begin, at least to some extent, to cater for events that aren’t on their front doorsteps.

Many performers, at least for now, do apparently still value a local presence. Particularly if, as many sadly still do, they rock up the day before their show opens and only then realising they might need some print. 

But then this demand for a local presence may of course change. And even now, with the right marketing approach, a willingness to hand-hold all the way and with official organisers and key venues onside, it seems printers of all different shapes, sizes and proximities might get involved. 

Theatre-goers’ love of arts festivals, and in particular the experimental, wonderfully ad-hoc brand of performance synonymous with ‘Fringe’, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. And neither, apparently, does the average performer’s need for print. 

Dupliquick’s Zebra Award Fringe poster competition

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Zebra Awards, Dupliquick will this year hold a special exhibition during the festival, showcasing all winners and runners-up. “We’re looking for not just beautiful design but obviously a poster’s got to sell tickets and a lot of the time, you might not believe it, but performers won’t include where the venue is, what the date or price is. You have to watch out for and help people with that kind of thing when you’re printing Fringe work,” says owner of Dupliquick Stuart Robertson.

2013 winner Diary of a Madman 

The production behind this poster is a one-man show set in 1830s St Petersburg and featuring a minor civil servant driven mad by bureaucracy. “The winner was chosen for the boldness of its approach, using just a very striking sketch to promote the show. It was agreed that seeing the poster would draw the passer-by in for a closer look,” says Robertson.

Runners-up

Faustus and the Snakes 

This story has been described as a mash-up between Marlowe and contemporary gang culture, Jacobean tragedy and Tarantino. “The Faustus runner-up was felt to be a strange but cool image which would attract younger people to the show,” says Robertson.

The Man in the Moone

Featuring myth, absurd humour and a unique acting style, this play features a man who embarks on an epic journey to the moon. “This was a simple but powerful poster which rewarded the viewer when looked at in detail,” says Roberston.

Art Festival opportunities 2014

Brighton Fringe 3 May-1 June www.brightonfringe.org

Stratford-upon-Avon Arts Festival 22 May-1 June www.stratforduponavonartsfestival.co.uk

Bath Fringe 28 May-8 June www.bathfringe.co.uk

The Greater Manchester Fringe Festival 1-31 July www.greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk

Bedford Festival 3-27 July www.bedfringe.com

Buxton 9-27 July www.buxtonfringe.org.uk

Reading 16-20 July www.readingfringefestival.co.uk

Camden 28 July-24 August www.camdenfringe.com

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 1-25 August www.edfringe.com

Brecon Fringe Festival 8-11 August www.breconfringe.co.uk

Ventnor Fringe, Isle of Wight 12-17 August www.ventnorexchange.co.uk

Windsor Fringe 19 September-5 October www.windsorfringe.co.uk

Canterbury Festival 18 October-1 November www.canterburyfestival.co.uk

The Greater Manchester Comedy Festival first two weeks November www.greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk