A week of record sales!

Well we opened the Box Office last Monday, and what a week it has been! Sales have been coming in thick and fast! All shows are booking very fast, and many performances have already sold out - which is quite a result!

The first week of public sales is always really interesting. Early trends begin to emerge indicating the hot tickets, and its always fascinating to see what audiences are going for. After working on the shows for so many months now, it's so interesting to see if the productions we expected to be popular end up doing the business!

The Marketing Department has also been busy on other fronts. Our new campaign - What Will You Think? - has now been officially launched, with the first press ads appearing last weekend. Get ready to see lots of different faces from the campaign plastered all over the City as the campaign really starts to take hold!

We're recording two ads on Monday - one for TV and one for the Internet, so we're dying to see how they work out. We've got lots of other things in the pipeline too - from bus-backs to giant billboards, so hopefully nobody will be able to live, work or pass through Dublin without knowing the Festival is in town! We also really want people to know that the Festival is for everyone - so that's why we have so many 'faces' in the campaign; people from all different walks of life. To use on old cliché, there truly is something for everyone!

Today we've also just received delivery of the brochure for the three Gala Nights that we'll be running during the Festival - Traces, Radio Macbeth and The History Boys - so we'll also all be busy dealing with enquiries and bookings for these. No rest for the wicked!

So, with less than five weeks to go 'til Opening Night, there's no sign of the madness abating! So, here's to shows continuing to sell like crazy so we can all sleep easy at night!

Ross Keane
Director of Marketing & Development