Digital Pharma: Boehringer gets social with Facebook
pharmafile | September 14, 2010 | News story | Medical Communications | Boehringer, Digital Pharma blog, Facebook
Boehringer Ingelheim is looking for fans on Facebook and wants its employees to be thought of as “superheroes, only with lab coats instead of capes”.
That’s the slightly tongue-in-cheek message from its new official corporate page on the popular social networking website.
Facebook may be snapping at Google’s heals for the title of the world’s most popular website, but the combined pressure of regulatory constraints and a fear of user-generated content mean that so far there is only a handful of official pharma company pages on the site.
A quick search of the site reveals official pages from Pfizer and Novartis – neither of which are open to users’ comments, US community pages from Sanofi and AstraZeneca, but not a lot besides.
One of the reasons for this is best highlighted by Sanofi’s travails earlier this year, when a disgruntled patient panicked the company into deleting all comments from its Sanofi Voices Facebook wall, subsequently locking it down to only allow company postings.
In this environment the refreshingly non-corporate language adopted by Boehringer and open access allowed for posting on its wall stand out.
“Unlike many companies we’ve enabled our wall for you to leave us a comment,” the company notes. “Given the regulations and nature of our industry that’s a risk, but we are going to give it a go.”
The company does have a few restrictions on what can be posted on the wall (“otherwise our lawyers will be mad at us”), but is up front about these. They include prohibitions on publishing medical advice or discussions of pharmaceutical products or medical conditions.
It also doesn’t endorse users’ comments, although so far these seem to show an awful lot of very happy Boehringer (and even ex-Boehringer) employees.
The page was launched as part of a promotional drive for the company’s 125th anniversary – which also has its own dedicated website.
In addition to this the company has been running a virtual quiz to raise awareness of its celebrations, posting questions on its Twitter account and linking these to its corporate website where the answers could be found.
Boehringer’s new Facebook page is not the first time the pharma company has used the site – earlier this year it funded an online game to raise awareness of diabetes – but clearly this is use of the site on a wider level.
The launch is apparently just the first phase of the company’s strategy, so it will be interesting to see where the company goes from here and how it continues to work with – and respond to – user-generated content.
Dominic Tyer is web editor for Pharmafocus and InPharm.com and the author of the Digital Pharma blog He can be contacted via email, Twitter or LinkedIn.
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