James Cropper: What colour is Manchester?

James Cropper asked us to find a more meaningful way to connect the UK paper mill with leading creatives. Able to colour match and create bespoke colours for paper and packaging, we developed a campaign built around the connection between colour, creativity, and location.

Brand

Content & Campaigns

Experience

One simple question. Infinite opinions. A multi-channel campaign built on the connection between colour, creativity and the places we call home. The result? A colour palette that bleeds Manchester: Network Yellow, Beetham Blue, Palace (not Kimpton) Red – linked back to James Cropper’s coloured paper range.

Industry

Events
Luxury Packaging
Manufacturing

Location

North West, UK

Deliverables

Brand Collateral
Brand Campaigns
Brand Content
Campaign

Approach

James Cropper has been manufacturing paper for over 180 years. As the last remaining speciality colour paper mill in the UK, the business has been quietly working behind the scenes, manufacturing paper for merchants and luxury brands. As part of a strategic shift, James Cropper tasked us with creating a meaningful way to connect with creatives. As the mill is uniquely able to colour match and create bespoke colours for paper and packaging, we developed a campaign built around the connection between colour, creativity, and location.

Campaign

This became the foundation for “What colour is?”, a campaign designed to highlight the importance of colour in our environment and how this shapes our cities, memories, landscapes and shared sense of place.

Manchester was the start. We interviewed members of the public and asked one simple question: “What colour is Manchester?”

Launch

The answers captured personal associations with the city and helped shape a palette inspired by the place itself. A social campaign built up suspense and intrigue before the responses were displayed at the Independent Paper Show in Manchester. Yellow, red and blue became the core, each linking back to recognisable parts of Manchester; the yellow of the tram network, the red brick buildings, the blue of Beetham Tower.

This visual thread was carried through and gave James Cropper a campaign that connected social content, public insight, colour storytelling and physical brand experience. The result was a campaign rooted in Manchester, helping James Cropper bring its product range and technical capability to life in a way that felt relevant to the event, true to the brand and memorable for the audience.

Project Info

EXP Team

Fraser Dockerty
Tom Grattan
Conner Griffin
Thomas Foster

Services

Brand Strategy
Brand Campaign
Social Media Content

We took to the streets to find iconic buildings, landmarks, and symbols as sources of colour inspiration, from the yellow trams to Beetham Tower, capturing the city to feature across the campaign. Working with the James Cropper team, we interviewed members of the public, asking them What Colour Is Manchester? with short clips featured across Instagram and TikTok.

Overlayed images of Manchester with key stats from the project. 800+ photos taken, 13km covered, 1 question.

A selection of behind the scenes shots from filming on the streets of Manchester

Billboard with a quote from one of the Manchester residents questioned.

The campaign design language featured a portal shape, inspired by the James Cropper Hallmark, that served as a framing device connecting the mill to Manchester – implemented through out-of-home, print materials, and on socials with motion design to bring the city to life.

After effects screen grab demonstrating the layering process for one of the stack videos

A poster of Beetham Tower wit the campaign branding overlayed

We activated the campaign at the Independent Paper Show, marking its Northern debut in Soho House, Manchester. Attracting over 1000 creatives over 2 days, a tabletop display of James Cropper samples allowed attendees to get their hands on UK made paper, select their colour of Manchester, and create an embossed counter with a custom Manchester design.