ABOUT

Set over three days, Station Stories was a unique, site specific, live, literature performance event using digital technology and improvised electronic sound. Six writers take an audience on a creative trip at Piccadilly.

Leading authors were commissioned to write pieces specifically for the event. The authors read their own stories, live, to a private audience in headphones, taking you on a trip of conspiracy, murder, love and revenge. Live background music was mixed on-site featuring samples taken from within Piccadilly itself. Participants were lead to different, specific areas of the train station for each individual story. The performers gradually revealed themselves from the throngs of passengers to the audience, interacting with the crowds as they went.

Having been involved at a conceptual level of the entire event I was well placed to understand the event and how best to market it. Station Stories used a variety of marketing channels and platforms to truly immerse the participants in the event, including a new website, a ten lightbox exhibition at Manchester Piccadilly, social media networks via dedicated Facebook and Twitter pages as well as posters, banners and floor graphics.

The foundation of the Station Stories branding was a specially commissioned collage by young up and coming artist Laura Mckeown, which was scanned and reartworked by myself. The logotype utilises the traditional rail network font ‘Transport’. The upper case execution allowing for a playful depiction of the aligning ‘T’s to create a train track.
Demographic research showed Twitter to be a fundamental channel to exploit when marketing to our sort after audience (18% of attendees had heard about the event through Twitter). I created a fully branded Twitter page, growing the account to hundreds of followers in a matter of weeks. Celebrity endorsements and subsequent retweets helping Station Stories sell out over it’s weekend shows. The Twitter feed was pulled in dynamically on the Station Stories website and was marketed as key element to the experience, promoting live on site tweeting and hashtags with the page itself being pushed via a mixture of channels from offline, to email campaigns.

The website is highly conceptual in it’s design, folded paper motifs playing on origami story telling. Original ticker tape scans and fonts complete the authenticity of the site. Download press sections, embedded Google map and expandable content complete the site.