We aimed to engage our audience through a single guerrilla event that would lift the literary competition out of the 'stuffy vintage typewriter' world it had inhabited and demonstrate the power and accessibility of language in a world of new media.On one night, from a secret vantage point in Auckland’s arts district, we wrote hundreds of live story starts inspired by real characters and events, and projected them on epic scale in the public square. We streamed a webcast of the projection site (aimed to trend on Twitter) and followed the event with a viral video from our footage (as content for arts and literary blogs). Once engaged, budding authors were encouraged to find starts of their own and enter a new 150-word category run via Facebook. From here, stories would be shared virally on the social network.

With our webcast trending on Twitter, and the resulting video shared by arts and literature blogs around the world, BNZ saw 500% more Facebook traffic overnight. Those fans stuck around, with a 340% increase in followers. The number of entries exceeded client expectations by 180%--more than enough to secure next year's sponsorship.So what stories did our audience find around them? One started with a leaf, one with a lawnmower, a bear, a bus, a barbecue, and the winner, with a 1972 Holden Kingswood. The vast majority of entries were submitted by first-time authors.