Archive for March, 2012

This is a guest post by Lauren who has been working with us for the past two weeks.

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…).

Thanks to visual.ly, you can now simply, quickly (and without cost) create an infographic (I know, I know…overkill) from any hashtag you are using in a PR or social media campaign.

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

What: This case study looks at the World’s shortest ad.

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

Monocle magazine recently enjoyed their fifth anniversary of publication and as part of the celebration they put together a video which takes you through the history of the business from foundation to the present day.

When talking about their subscriber events they said:

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.

Over the past few months I have hit a bit of a bloggers wall.

Lots of half drafted posts….ill-conceived ideas….half baked reviews and I have generally found the whole thing a bit of a struggle.  Yesterday was my birthday (37, I don’t look it? thanks.) and for once I had a day off work.  Well, that’s not true, I have two days off work each week but I always have my kids with me so yesterday was different.  I had half a day to myself, no friends around, no distractions, no kids home and husband went for a “birthday surf” (yes, I know).

Whilst lying in the spa, being pampered within an inch of my life, I had time to actually think and reflect on things.  Although I tried to keep my mind clear and relax (not a natural talent) I was processing all the pitches we’ve done recently, the conversations Ged and I have had, the new clients, the events within the agency, the new people I have met. It was refreshing.  Really refreshing to have some time where I wasn’t working, being needed or being social. No phone. No conversations.

It was a bit of a revelation (although I’ve been advising people to do this for years).

I am really bad at allowing myself time to process things.  Time without the pulls and pushes of life getting in the way. So I have made a resolution that every month I will find a day.  Or maybe two half day to process thoughts, catch myself up and get things down on paper. I haven’t told my boss or my husband this yet so shh.

Anyway, I came up with about 6 blog post ideas yesterday that I actually managed to think through.

So now all I have to do is write them.