Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18519

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Pfizer Starts Social-Media Channel On Popular Site
Pharma Live 2010 July 28
http://pharmalive.com/news/index.cfm?articleID=719995

Full text:

Pfizer Inc., in a first for a regulated industry, announced Tuesday the launch of its own social-media channel.

The channel, on the SlideShare site, will provide a space at which the public can access investor and corporate presentations along with documents and videos.

“This channel offers an integrated social media experience, delivering a variety of content — presentations, video, blog posts — via the largest online resource for sharing presentations,” said Ray Kerins, Pfizer’s vice president for external affairs and worldwide communications, in a statement. “We’re pleased to be the first company in a regulated industry to create a custom channel on SlideShare.”

Kerins said it is possible that scientists from Pfizer’s largest worldwide research site in Groton and New London will be featured on the new channel because its Think Science Now content will likely be used as part of SlideShare.

“We have some compelling stories to tell about our amazing people and the extraordinary work they do,” Kerins said in response to e-mailed questions. “We’ll continue to explore using SlideShare, Twitter, YouTube, Pfizer.com and other channels to share important stories about Pfizer.”

SlideShare, which claims about 30 million unique visitors monthly, will offer Pfizer a custom-branded space on its social media site at www.slideshare.net/Pfizer. The announcement of the Pfizer channel came during a pharmaceutical-industry summit meeting for public relations professionals held this week at Pfizer’s world headquarters in New York City.

“We see this type of service as having a growing role in the future of investor and analyst communications,” said Bob Pearson, chief technology officer for the San Francisco-based public relations firm WCG. “The channel customization offers the flexibility to meet the needs of regulated industries.”

Other companies using SlideShare to produce their own channels include Symantec, Cisco Systems, Dell computers and Hewlett Packard. To explore various SlideShare channels, go to http://slideshare.net/channels.