The Brief

The Melbourne Writers Festival struggled to overcome its traditional literary image of being stuffy and academic. Plenty of otherwise culturally-engaged Melbournians assumed it had nothing to offer them. We needed to speak to this target audience of young, ambitious professionals (25-40) at a relevant time and place, and do so in a fresh, unexpected way that would not only overcome their indifference but would also inspire them to buy tickets.

Creative Execution

Wi-Fiction is an entirely new medium and genre of storytelling, conceived to contemporise the Melbourne Writer’s Festival brand in a fresh and unexpected way. Wi-Fiction brought the Festival theme, ‘Stories Unbound’ to life by quite literally putting stories in people’s Wi-Fi-enabled mobile devices.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

‘Wi-Fiction’ gave us a new way to reach our target customers as they visited Federation Square – Melbourne’s cultural epicentre and Australia’s biggest free Wi-Fi hotspot. To create it, a set of Wi-Fi routers was placed in the square. When anyone nearby took advantage of the free Wi-Fi on their mobile device, they saw that the list of network names had seemingly conspired to create short, humorous stories. Special characters prefixed each line, keeping them locked in order at the top of the user’s pop-up window. With Festival booths just metres away, users could then purchase tickets basically on the spot.

Results

Over 65,000 people in Federation Square were exposed to over 20 different Wi-Fiction stories. Significantly, a 37% increase in ticket sales (compared with 2010) was recorded during the time Wi-Fiction was live. More generally, the Festival experienced near-capacity attendances, with over 45,000 tickets sold in total, and general awareness of the Festival as a literary event rose to 61% (up from 52% the previous year).