The filming of the RSC’s 2008 production of Hamlet was the subject of an online petition and media speculation. When it was finally announced last month that the original company were reuniting with director Gregory Doran to produce a film version of the production the Twitterverse went a little bit mental.

The RSC has been part of the world of Twitter since February with a growing band of followers (now over 3000) and a tweet every working day. We wanted to maintain the excitement about the Hamlet filming so enlisted 3 actors, Keith Osborn, Sam Alexander and Tom Davey, to text their inner most thoughts as well as the everyday film set happenings to little old me in the marketing department. Production company Illuminations also tweeted the goings on and posted a daily blog on their website.

Everything ran pretty smoothly. Every tweet needed to be signed off by the RSC Press Department (to ensure top secret Hamlet information wasn’t tweeted unintentionally, I actually purposefully didn’t ask where the filming was taking place, just in case I did something stupid), and often I’d get weekend updates which by Monday morning would be slightly out of date. Although the time delay between actual Hamlet happening to tweet could sometimes be 24 hours the Hamlet Twitter fans didn’t seem to mind and responded excitedly to the posts. Twitter users adopted the #hamlet tag and spread the word, creating that ultimate viral effect that we marketers love.

Keith also proved himself to be something of a blogging superstar with fans of his Summer 08 blog on the RSC website pleased to be getting their daily dose once again via Twitter.

To raise profile further the idea of the Hamlet synopsis Twitter Challenge was born. On Thursday 11 June we invited folk to tweet their version of Hamlet in 140 characters. This generated about 200 entries and numerous re-tweets (more viral) – the entries were great to read, and luckily the job of choosing the winners went to Keith and John (the guy from Illuminations) (search the #hamlet tag to view the entries, and all the other Hamlet activity).

To sum up…

Great things about the Twitter Project Hamlet:

- more people engaging and responding to the RSC

- working with another organisation – the guys at Illuminations were great and created additional content which we would often re-tweet

- working with actors

- more followers

- Some lovely coverage in the Financial Times and The Stage (still can’t get over the fact that a project I worked on had some national press)

- the model used seemed to work well for us, with no major mishaps, paving the way for similar Twitter projects in the future.

Things that could have gone better

- didn’t anticipate the enormity of the Twitter Challenge, maybe need to get some better processes in place to manage the response if we were to do this again

- time delay (although, in this case there was little we could do about this)

- we couldn’t do photos (many reasons for this)

- Too many tweets – did we potentially annoy RSC Followers who are perhaps more interested in the “on stage” work rather than the filming of Hamlet?

- maybe neglected other RSC social networking (namely Facebook) in favour of Twitter. Could we potentially run something similar on Twitter and Facebook or is something like this better suited to just Twitter?

If you followed the Hamlet tweets then feel free to post a comment to let me know what you thought.

The Travel Trade Britain exhibition could hardly be described as the highlight in my diary this week.  A lot of tourist attractions trying to convince group trip organisers to book.  It was going to be quite dull.  That is, until I discovered the Wedgwood stand and the potter’s wheel.  I was rubbish at art at school and felt a bit apprehensive settling down in front of the wheel with my lump of clay. But once I got started, getting messier and messier, I found an inner calm from moulding the clay gently and really enjoyed creating something (maybe art, maybe just a beginner’s pot) from scratch.  I think I may have found my medium. I love the feeling of discovering something new and I’m now inspired to find a pottery making class near me.

As a rule I wouldn’t recommend a trip to the Travel Trade Britain exhibition but if you want to try out a potter’s wheel then head over to the NEC tomorrow. 

Photos to follow but for now I couldn’t resist a reference to Ghost (although I hasten to add that my experience at the potter’s wheel was very different).

1.  I have Dystonia

Dopa Responsive Dystonia to be precise.  You probably don’t know what Dystonia is, but don’t worry most doctors don’t know about it either so I spent 5 years of my childhood struggling with an unidentified neurological disorder.  That makes it sound dramatic, the main problem I had was walking.  To cut a long story short I saw a lot of doctors and then one decided that they knew what was up with me and since that day I take two little blue tablets a day and everything is hunky dory.  The marvels of medicine

2.  I haven’t read an entire book for over a year

I used to love reading books but recently I just haven’t really been able to get into anything.  I buy books, I love going into second hand book shops but I have shelves full of half read books.  I keep the bookmarks in but I know I’m never going to go back to them.  I feel ashamed.

3 . I can’t stand milk

I don’t have milk with anything, because I don’t like the taste, and weirdly, the texture, of it.  I drink black tea, black coffee, don’t like milkshake and have a splash of juice on cereal.  It seems to be a genetic thing as a lot of people in my family also don’t do milk. There are no exceptions to the no milk rule.  I don’t even like it if a bit dribbles on my hand.

4.  I once stole £12 worth of postage

My first employer  after graduating was a Birmingham based television production company who did not treat me well.  I lasted 9 months before my brain dried up completely, flipped out and then resigned.  As Front Desk Co-ordinator (read: receptionist and general skivvy) I was in charge of the post franking machine.  I had a package to send to my friend in Mexico and there was no post office near by so I weighed and franked the parcel myself.  I did have intentions of paying the money back, but then I left. Nevermind.

5.  I’m a record breaker

As a kid I played the clarinet and my primary school somehow ended up getting involved in a record breaking attempt to create the world’s largest youth jazz band. This involved learning a short piece of music, and then getting on a coach to BBC Studios in London for the recording of Record Breakers.  Roy Castle played his trumpet, Cheryl Baker was there…good times. And we broke the record. (I wonder if it’s on YouTube?).

6.  I once got mistaken for the girl in Jurrasic Park

When I was on holiday in Florida (I think I was about 10) some random woman asked me if I was the girl from Jurrasic Park. I told her I wasn’t. She seemed disappointed.

7.  Radio 1 DJ Colin Murray kissed me

My friend Anna and I decided to go and see our favourite Northern Irish DJ at The Sancturay in Digbeth. We were young and a bit obsessed.  We bought him a beer and he was thankful.  He was also quite sweaty.