Firstly, GSK launched a corporate blog called “American Health: More Than Medicine“. Below the main header, a small tagline (in small print) reads “This is an official GSK blog and is intended for US residents only” — I bet someone in legal made them add that sub-text to the banner

While I think it’s really cool that they’ve chosen an interesting and catchy name for the blog, I do think they could have done a much better job with the domain name, which is currently: http://www.morethanmedicine.us.gsk.com/blog. Doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue nor is it easy to remember! But hey, at least they’ve got an active blog!

To my knowledge, this is only the third corporate pharma blog online; the other two being JNJBTW and CNTO411, with the latter being defunct since Octoer 2008. Despite this achievement, there has been some push back because the authors of the blog have not been “fully transparent”, as they have only identified themselves as Michael F. and Michael M. from “GSK Communications” — read the comments on this by Mike Huckman and Ed Silverman (both great guys, btw) and then read GSK’s very valid response “Content is King Here, Not the One Who Posts It“.

Personally, I think the fact that they actually have a blog is a big achievement and the authors not revealing their full identities (at least not yet) should not cloud the fact that they are blogging regularly, with lots of good content. Furthermore, their response to these comments, shows that they are not just “preaching”, but also listening to feedback and responding as necessary.

Overall, I really liked their first public blog post (the blog had been running internally for a while before going “live” to the public), which really puts into perspective why they are blogging and what their intentions are for the blog. To me, it also showed that they really “get” the nature of social media and have adopted the right attitude towards it. I’ll leave you with a quote from the blog:

During the same week as the GSK blog launch, Sanofi-Aventis also launched Sanofi-Aventis.TV — an online video repository for publishing a variety of Sanofi-Aventis produced videos. The video channels include: Our Expertise, Around the World, Your Health, Solidarity, and Working for People. I find this approach very interesting, as they haven’t just focused on a single topic, such as patient testimonials, brand promotion, corporate announcements/interviews, recruiting videos, etc. But instead, they chose to associate their overall corporate brand with all of these types of information.

Although the selection of videos per channel is somewhat meager at the moment, at least they have a platform up and running for any future videos that they published. Many of their videos have a very professional/corporate feel to them, but perhaps some or most have been repurposed from previous initiatives, which makes a whole lot of sense. It will be interesting to see how often they will update the site with new videos and how the content will grow.

Having heard the Sanofi-Aventis regulatory folks and their US-CEO speak at conferences recently, I would expect more and more social media intiatives to come forth from them. I think SA.TV is a way for the public to get a better understanding of what Sanofi-Aventis is all about and the wide array of activities that drug companies — like Sanofi — are involved with. It’s like a “behind the scenes” documentary that provides a different perspective to what is being portrayed and perceived publicly. I look forward to seeing what else is in store.