The Village Voice is an iconic editorial channel. The highly competitive editorial market in New York and the USA meant that the Village Voice had to re-establish its position as the real, uncensored voice of NY, and a go-to source of arts and culture. We began with the strategy that rather than just compete directly with the competition, we would prove our position in a way that only Village Voice can – and create a new platform of content that harnesses the real stories of New Yorkers as an entirely new space for an editorial brand.

Village Voice has a heritage of capturing the real, uncensored voice of New York, and being a go-to source of arts and culture. ‘New York Writes Itself.com’ and the resulting Off-Broadway play ‘8 Million Protagonists’ has breathed new life into the brand position, by creating a new channel of arts and culture itself, that is fuelled by the real, uncensored stories of New Yorkers. This new platform of crowd sourced content is an entirely new space for an editorial brand to occupy, and has proved that the Village Voice captures the real, uncensored voice of New York.

We began with the insight that the most real, uncensored and entertaining stories that exist in New York, come from people on the street. Our creative solution was to give people a simple online destination to write down these great stories called ‘New York Writes Itself.com’, which can then be re-created as reality driven content. The best stories submitted were re-created as a first of its kind crowd sourced Off-Broadway play called ‘8 Million Protagonists’.

The idea struck a real cultural vein in NY, using theatre as an entirely new content platform for an editorial brand, generating:

- 51 million media impressions

- 84 articles from editorial channels outside The Village Voice, including New York Times, Fast Company, Playbill and New York Theater Review.

- 20% increase in traffic to VillageVoice.com following launch

- Sold out shows over 2 weeks in Manhattan

- 9.5 minutes average time per visit at NewYorkWritesItself.com

- 2 million unique visits to NewYorkWritesItself.com to date

- $20,000 in tickets sales donated to NY Hurricane Sandy victims.