Aurora Comms Blog

Social media enabled GP practices

Posted on 26. Aug, 2010 by phaedrus.

In preparation for a recent visit to my new local GP in the London Borough of Camden, I decided to check opening hours and contact details online. I was surprised and interested to see that, alongside the usual information, user comments and ratings were displayed for my convenience.
In fact, through the NHS Choices website, [...]

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Informed privacy decisions and informed openness

Posted on 14. Aug, 2010 by neilcrump.

Ed Purkis wrote a blog post a few weeks ago that has had my mind whirling. The post read:
The author of a report which features the personal details of 100 million Facebook users says he released the information to highlight the privacy issues associated with social networking. This has received widespread media pick-up because it [...]

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Pharma comms in the age of austerity

Posted on 13. Aug, 2010 by phaedrus.

This month’s issue of Pharmaceutical Marketing (PM) contains a fascinating look at the road ahead for the pharmaceutical industry in the age of austerity. Aurora MD and co-founder Claire Eldridge’s cover story insights are realistic yet optimistic. Click here to read the article.
With massive health service funding cuts pledged by the Lib-Cons, the pharmaceutical industry [...]

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We hate social media bloopers

Posted on 04. Aug, 2010 by neilcrump.

In the making of our ‘We Hate Social Media’ videos the Aurora team had to put themselves in front of a camera…

We put ourselves through this ‘ordeal’ because we believe that it is time for pharma companies to embrace social media with rigour and make a valuable contribution to the global health discussion that is [...]

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Cut people some slack *please*

Posted on 29. Jul, 2010 by neilcrump.

Back in August last year I wrote a post about how we were at the ‘toddler’ stage for the use of social media by pharma companies and that a few elite athletes were starting to flex their muscles and show us what they are made of.
So a year has passed and has much changed? Are [...]

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The chat: We hate social media mashup

Posted on 23. Jul, 2010 by phaedrus.

Aurora has dived into the social media ocean head first and can’t wait for the ripples to reach you. We recently posted six home-made videos on our own YouTube channel, ironically named We Hate Social Media. At Aurora we don’t hate social media, far from it in fact. Some of us are positively geeky about [...]

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Old Spice, New Spice, and a great copycat

Posted on 17. Jul, 2010 by neilcrump.

One of the most popular viral campaigns to date is weaving its magic all over the internet. It sparked conversation at the #hcsmeu tweet-up yesterday and followed up a discussion about healthcare communications and viral campaigns that the group had a few weeks ago (which I wrote up in this blog post).
The campaign du jour [...]

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More on why we hate social media

Posted on 02. Jul, 2010 by phaedrus.

The We Hate Social Media videos continued to roll out this week, covering the challenges faced by the pharmaceutical industry when engaging in social media.
There are six videos here to view. Neil introduced the topic, then Claire spoke about appropriateness. Now Sian has covered regulations, Sarah discussed the risks involved, Aaron explored the issue of [...]

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Social media preparedness learning from the “Deepwater Horizon Incident”

Posted on 11. Jun, 2010 by phaedrus.

British Petroleum (BP) is pumping $50 million into their campaign to rebuild their reputation in the aftermath of the recent oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico. BP is using online methods, purchasing Google ad words, “oil” and “spill”, to direct as many internet browsers as possible to their website, which has been overhauled to [...]

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Virology in healthcare social media

Posted on 06. Jun, 2010 by neilcrump.

As Nike’s World Cup Writes the Future (WtF) campaign, which Aurora loves, continues to trump their previous viral success, I posed the following questions to the #hcsmeu community at the week before last’s Friday (28 May 2010) tweet-up:  What are the best examples of a healthcare campaign in Europe going viral and whether we have [...]

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