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. As part of the wider ‘Stories Unbound’ campaign, Wi-Fiction was conceived to redress this balance and contemporise the festival in a fresh and unexpected way. It allowed us to re-engage our core audience of young, ambitious professionals (25-40) at a relevant time and place, overcoming their indifference and inspiring them to take part in the festival.

Wi-Fiction created a whole new media channel, and a totally new genre of storytelling, by utilising ‘available networks’ pop-up windows on WI-Fi-enabled mobile devices. A mysterious box containing a set of Wi-Fi routers was placed within Federation Square – Melbourne’s cultural epicentre and Australia’s biggest free Wi-Fi hotspot. When anyone nearby used their mobile device to connect to the web, they saw that the list of network names had seemingly conspired to create a short and humorous story – one of over 20 written for the campaign, each bringing to life the Festival theme, ‘Stories Unbound.’ 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.

Over 65,000 people in Federation Square were exposed to over 20 different Wi-Fiction stories during the Festival period. 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).