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Wi--Fiction

2011 Melbourne Writers Festival

Issue 23 | June 2012

Agency

JWT Melbourne

Creative Team

Executive Creative Director: Richard Muntz; Creative Director: Jim Ritchie; Art Director: Jim Ritchie; Copywriter: Jim Ritchie, Deborah Frenkel

Other Credits

Planner: Anuj Mehra; Account Director: Prue Tehan; Account Managers: Melissa Benavides, James Wright; Client: Juliette Kringas

Date

August 2011

Background

Every year hundreds of writers and thousands of visitors attend the Melbourne Writers Festival. The festival has grown year on year, but the MWF Brand still struggles to shake off its stereotypically literary image of being stuffy and academic. The challenge was to redress this balance and make the festival brand more contemporary. And do it with virtually no budget.

Idea

The festival theme was "Stories Unbound" and to bring this to life in a contemporary, unexpected and memorable way the agency developed Wi-Fiction, a completely new medium for storytelling.

A mysterious box containing six wireless routers was placed within Federation Square (the centre of the Festival). As people relaxed in the square, invariably they took advantage of free Wi-Fi on their smart-phones, iPads or laptops.

When asked to pick a network, they saw that the list of Wi-Fi network names had conspired to create short and humorous stories. Special characters prefixed each line of the stories, keeping the stories connected and making sure they appeared before any other network.

Results

Much laughter, interest, comment.

Our Thoughts

Melbourne is shining just as brightly as Sydney these days on the global ad map, and JWT is one of the reasons why. Like the 'I Care Button' several pages back, this idea transforms a well-known technological interface by giving it a fresh twist.