First stop was the much acclaimed (so said the man at the information desk) crystal skull sculpture entitled “For the Love of God”. Imagine, if you will, four girls let out of the office early and coming across a human skull cast incrusted with £14million of flawless diamonds. And then imagine if one of those girls is Beth. Perhaps you get the drift.. After many “oohhs”, “ahhhhs” and speculations about where we could get one of our own, we headed upstairs.

The main exhibition was less slightly sparkly but none the less eye-opening. Room 1 is home to Hirst’s first ever iconic Spot Paining, 8 brightly coloured pans on a white wall, a picture of Hirst posing with a decapitated head and an up-turned hairdryer delicately balancing a ping-pong ball. We were all broadly familiar with Hirst’s work, but had purposely tried to avoid reading the critical reviews before we arrived, so this combination certainly set the scene.

In the next room, we were greeted by a large glass box in which Hirst plays out the life-cycle. Maggots hatch, develop into flies and feed on a severed cows head. Many get zapped on the “insect-o-cutor”, the rest fly around the enclosed space until their time on this earth is over. We got it - sort of.. The triviality of life - over in the blink of an eye. We wondered what happened to all the dead flies (this piece of the exhibition has been going since 1990), and found our answer in one of the later rooms - a large black spot, perhaps 3metres in diameter, thickly covered in dead flies. Hmmm..

The healthcare girls perused the Medicine Cabinets trying to spot drug names they were familiar with through the ages, but despite reading the background guide, I don’t think we really understood the art factor there. That said, others stood transfixed looking through the cabinets, so it goes to show what appeals to one is lost on another.

Claire enjoyed pointing out the major organs of the dissected cow - trying to guess if it was a male or female based on its udder size. Beth got in trouble for trying to rescue a dying butterfly. Laura and I pondered the 6ft ash tray half-filled with cigarette ends and wondered just how many of the cigarettes Hirst had smoked himself.

We enjoyed the structure of the spot paintings and the simplicity of the cabinets filled with perfectly aligned rows of pills, cigarette ends and diamonds. By accident, we went through the rooms in reverse order, which we later decided Hirst would probably have quietly approved of.

Some of the pieces challenged our thinking, others inspired us.. It was a great opportunity to actually experience this acclaimed artist’s works first hand, and although we didn’t necessary “get” a lot of the explanations, we found the majority fascinating to observe at and often beautiful in a way we hadn’t anticipated. All in all, a creatively juicy experience!

For more information, check out the Tate Modern site.

There are a number of reports showing which social networks parents trust but when it comes to reading the papers vs joining forums vs family or peer support, we wanted to know where people turn when they want child health advice.

What does this mean for PR and digital comms professionals?

Long live the integrated campaign…

Our latest group is for a film concept we are creating in the healthcare field and we added an extra question in.  What attributes make a Mum want to share a video on Facebook with other parents?

There is a famous quote from Maya Angelou,

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

It seems this rings as true in today’s digital world as ever.  Humour was stated as important, as was the message of the video but people also want to be made to think. They want to be made to feel.

This is good news for PR and social media professionals using Facebook advertising to support their campaigns as previously the insights fell short of what clients were used to in terms of delivering a result against a specific call to action. It also lets us see what has been achieved as a result of a paid campaign versus what was happening anyway as a result of ongoing Facebook activity.

From Inside Facebook:

Previously, it had been difficult for marketers to understand what sort of effect their ads had beyond building a fan base since Facebook did not provide information about what users did after they clicked on an ad. This change seems to be part of a continued push to de-emphasize Likes as a campaign goal, and instead encourage marketers to focus on engagement within the platform. Today’s announcement does not affect Facebook’s pricing model. Ads are still sold on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis….

Under the old system advertisers could only get data about the number of people who liked the page as a result of the ad. They could visit a separate page insights dashboard to see the total likes, comments and shares for a post, but there was no way to distinguish which actions came organically versus through paid media.

More meaningful commercial insights? LIKE.

It was the middle of the day, I was somewhere between wandering why Tarzan never had a beard and whether the Doc Martens I like are really worth the £100 price tag when boom! Natalie asks me if I want to write a blog on my time here.
The name’s Lauren. I’m 15. I go to Waldegrave School and if you hadn’t already guessed, this is about my work experience. Ruder Finn is one of the top PR firms in the city and I was lucky enough to get the chance to do my work experience here so during my 2 weeks work experience one of the things I wanted to discover was what makes a great firm tick, what their inspiration is, what it is that keeps them motivated. The answer is quite simply (and not surprisingly) - biscuits.

I think I may have found the new world record holders for ‘Most amount of biscuits eaten in a short space of time by a group of people who have mostly given up biscuits for Lent but can’t resist a good old Jammy Dodger’ Let me start back on my first day. I met Natalie and was soon introduced to everyone - although I thought I’ll be lucky if I even remember 2 names… But for the first day I was pretty much glued to my desk. Literally. I mean it was like I was afraid if I stood up I would feel the eyes of the office just watching me.

I went to lunch as soon as I could, looked around Topshop and sat in Pret where I came across a very over enthusiastic man working at the till and an elderly lady who chose to sit uncomfortably close on the table next to me. Anyway, in case you couldn’t already tell, I was nervous. Really nervous. On the first day of school, you have your friends to mess around with, have a laugh, take your mind off of things, you know? But when you don’t know anyone and you’re in a totally new place you reckon you’ll be lucky if you even make it up until lunchtime…
I’ll be honest, when I arrived I was pretty impressed with the new Ruder Finn office, I was thinking ‘Is this what works really like? Have they been conning us kids for years? I mean there’s a PS3 and iPad in the corner with flat screen – where’s the work in that?’ This was all back in February when I came for an interview with Emma, after this I was looking forward (if not still really nervous) to my first day. Originally I hardly spoke to anyone; I sat at my computer feeling –for once in my life- unbelievably shy. By Thursday I was more in my comfort zone and even had a chat with people (which at the time seemed like a big step). And by Friday I was thinking about how glad I was that I had another week here, I mean I’d only just got to know everyone and only just settled in.
So here I am, second week in. Scanning newspapers like there’s no tomorrow. Answering the phone (which I was very proud of). And sitting in meetings. I think this experience has given better idea about my future. I vowed I would never want to be cooped up in an office everyday when I’m older but being here has shown me it’s not where you are it’s what you do and who you do it with. I know now how hard I need to push myself to get into what I really want to do; it won’t just get handed to me on a plate. There’s so many people that I got to know and made my time here really fab so thanks Natalie, Charlotte, Emma (for giving me the opportunity), Lou, Peter (for all the tea), Will, Matt and Mark but really I’d like to say thanks to everyone. It’s been great! As someone here said to me reflecting back on their work experience at ‘Comet’: ‘No…I really didn’t enjoy it; I couldn’t see myself in the future…selling Hoovers… So if you want to do something you have to work really hard and carry on working hard even if people slack you have to work really hard’- thanks for that Mark (although I still strongly believe politics is not my area of expertise…).

Six basic steps:

1. Open www.visual.ly

2. Select “create”

3. Select “Life of a hashtag”

4. Insert said #hashtag (N.B the tool only uses data a month from current date)

5. Select preferred design theme

6. Share / download / embed

Here’s an example for an event I recently moderated on behalf of M3: marketing media mums.

Just a basic demo as it is a bit patchy on some details but with a high traffic hashtag, it could make a change from just listing out the results in the client wrap up report.

infographic created with visual.ly

Who: At 1 second long it was created on behalf of the OCD Foundation by McCann Erickson Israel.

Why we like it: It is simple but it takes communications into real world experience and does it online to open up access and reduce cost.  You get the message immediately about the repeated actions that OCD sufferers go through every day.

Licensed for use under creative commons by Numberstumper

1. Include the words “In 100 words or less….describe your creative idea”…

2. Request responses to be contained within an excel spreadsheet…

3. Send ideas to procurement at first stage…

4. Ask for ideas to be good, fast and cheap….

5. Ensure the agency focuses on ideas, messages, themes and activity that is already in use and not working…

Image courtesy of Betsy Weber - licensed under creative commons

“If we put a number on it, people will try to make the number go up….we’re told to make that number go up.

Increase the number of fans, friends and followers, so your shouts will be heard.

The problem of course is that more noise is not better noise.”

Seth Godin, 2011

Good conversation and a glass of white wine - that’s our type of social networking

We say: Facebook is all very well, but don’t forget the value of building real-world relationships and interactions.