or the third and final article in our 3Cs campaign, it’s time to place the focus on Rhapsody and Walstead’s extensive content production capabilities. Since 1980 we have managed the production on a variety of projects, from large-scale print
to small-scale digital. To make life easier, our dedicated account managers will work with you to establish a faultless workflow and ensure projects are delivered on deadline.
The recent pandemic lockdown proved that print plays a key role in reaching consumers in the home. It’s been reported that campaigns including print are 67% more effective at delivering new customers than those without. Rhapsody and Walstead are adept at taking print projects from inception through to commissioning, writing, editing, retouching, pre-press and printing.
We’ve worked for some huge consumer titles including HELLO! Fashion, Tesco magazine, Mr Porter Post, and brands like Aston Martin, Thames & Hudson and Boden to create incredibly designed print products, utilising our in-house colour management expertise, image manipulation and proofing. For Boden we were also responsible for swatch matching for ecommerce and print, to ensure that the colour of a jacket in the catalogue was the same as that on the website, and identical to the one that arrived after the customer had made an order.
Today, digital and video content is king, and this is especially true of content which can be consumed via a mobile phone. 60% of consumers now expect to see video as part of a brand experience and 91% of buyers prefer interactive visual content. In order to satisfy this demand, Rhapsody and Walstead are highly proficient not just at creating bite-sized, engaging video content but also live streaming, vlogs, webinars, events, interviews, tutorials, testimonials, behind the scenes videos and location, model and product shoots.
Fashion and model shoots have been a core part of the Rhapsody & Walstead business since we started, so our clients expect nothing less than the best. We’ve organised and managed product and celebrity shoots for Cadbury, Dalston’s, Fairfax & Favor and Colefax & Fowler, among many others. Our industry knowledge, passion, ecommerce expertise and the streamlined processes from our global studios are why our clients keep coming back, year after year.
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Our retouching team are consummate perfectionists who use their keen eye for detail to produce the best work possible. No matter the client or their preferred style, our team works hard to deliver exceptional quality imagery. Our digital online colour system can create over 2.5 million colours, which our experienced staff work magic with. All our projects are quality-controlled from start to finish, ensuring all proofs are certified and that what our clients sign-off for press is exactly what they receive from the printers.
We’ve provided colour management services to Waitrose, John Deere and Mazda among others, working with brand guidelines and retouch manuals. All of our retail clients are also offered swatch matching services to take their colour management to the next level.
Our Engine content production tool is the backbone of our enterprise. It expertly manages our fast-paced workflows, providing total transparency for clients, real-time status updates and page turners, as well as assisting with project management, magazine flatplanning, and more.
In addition, our digital platform partner Ceros allows us to create highly engaging web-based experiences. Ceros is both quick-to-market and cost-effective, making it a smart solution for many clients.
We recently developed a voice app to give clients the option of adding this cutting-edge technology into their offering. Now audiences can find information quickly and easily using their voice so making use of built-in data analytics and a content algorithm can help to future-proof businesses even further.
As global businesses, Rhapsody and Walstead recognise the importance of international communication. Our diverse team are multilingual and we work with expert translators to produce translation and transcreation for print projects and digital campaigns alike.
Walstead and Rhapsody assisted HOLA!, HELLO! and HELLO! Fashion in making workflow improvements to the client’s soft proofing process and transferring them to Rhapsody’s bespoke flatplan management system, Engine, which allows teams to share or review content globally. By drawing upon the skills of Walstead and Rhapsody’s production network in Madrid, London and Poland, we were also able to make significant efficiencies for the client, delivering absolute satisfaction on every issue. HOLA! is now produced in 36 hours on a weekly basis, achieving in excess of a 30% cost saving.
We also created fully responsive mobile publishing apps for HELLO! and HELLO! Fashion utilising custom-built WordPress and Indesign templates which automatically migrate 80% of content (on average) from a PDF replica, reducing lead times and workload. In addition, thanks to the use of video content, subscription-based in-app purchases, live RSS feeds and automated push notifications, the client has been able to significantly increase user engagement and generate digital revenue.
In the two years since Walstead and Rhapsody began working with online luxury fashion retailer Yoox Net-A-Porter (YNAP) we have provided 20% time and cost savings by making improvements in the following areas: high-end fashion retouching, colour management, page production, digital asset management, content, proofing and file delivery. YNAP produces various items of print and digital collateral and has seen workflow efficiencies thanks to Rhapsody's Engine software and account management services. Rhapsody's faultless handiwork can be seen across YNAP titles including Porter Magazine and Mr Porter Post as well as various supplements, lookbooks, gift guides and brand team projects.
More recently we produced a shoppable digital publication aimed at YNAP’s EIPs (Extremely Important People). Given the shopping restrictions in place during the global COVID-19 pandemic, there became a need to allow luxury shoppers to access and shop the latest looks. Rhapsody took a standard page turner-style publication and transformed it into a shoppable edition which allowed the EIPs to collect items in their basket and click a button to send the contents to their personal shopper via email or WhatsApp. The personal shopper could then pre-order the contents of the basket in their client’s particular size and requirements. By using our unique technology, Rhapsody was able to give the EIPs the ability to shop as normal, despite international lockdowns and closed boutiques.
Boden is a British clothing retailer which sells its mens, womens and childrens clothing in its own boutiques, online and via mail order and catalogue. Walstead and Rhapsody have been working with Boden for more than 18 years across all of its brands for both print and online. The bulk of this work has involved heavy conceptual image retouching and swatch-matching, which is used across Boden’s global print and digital channels for sites in the US, France, Germany and beyond.
Want to produce faultless content with Rhapsody and Walstead CE? Get in touch today…
Whether it focuses on food, fashion, sport or business, there’s still a huge appetite for quality print content and, together, Rhapsody and Walstead produce some of the best.
We have worked with a wide range of brands including AXA Insurance, Nike, Red Bull, Pizza Express, Adobe, The Ritz Club and Huawei. No matter the industry, our dedicated team can help script and storyboard the perfect video to satisfy your business goals.
Boden highlighted that one of its key challenges was its high return rate which we have helped to reduce significantly by achieving more accurate colour swatch-matching. Our in-house team retouch between 4-6,000 images per month on average, to strict brand guidelines. Utilising the colour management skills of our in-house experts, these images are quality controlled by Rhapsody before being released to Boden for approval. The duration of Walstead and Rhapsody’s partnership with Boden and the high volumes of work entrusted to us both highlight the level of confidence Boden has in our exceptional output and the extremely positive nature of this successful business relationship.
