Boehringer Ingelheim has rolled out a new blog as the German drugmaker travels yet another avenue of social media. The company has tapped just about every major social media platform and in September launched the online pharma game "Syrum" on Facebook.
As PMLive reported, Boehringer's new blog, called More Health, is the company's first. It's one of the latest tools in the drugmaker's alliance with the social entrepreneur group Ashoka. The blog strives to enhance relations with those working to improve society and provide them with a platform to spread their messages.
Boehringer has racked up all kinds of kudos for its social media efforts in the pharma industry, which has been operating with relatively scant guidance from regulators on how to operate on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. Those on the cutting edge have clung to draft guidance from the FDA last year and generally steered clear of practices that don't fly with other marketing mediums.
Boehringer, for instance, has joined in a common practice among pharma groups that provide online resources for patients without promoting specific products. And the company launched a website in November that provides information for patients with hepatitis C, for which the company is also developing therapies.
Clearly, the company has a diversified approach to participating in social media and goes online to reach a number of different audiences. (But consumers/patients appear to be high on the list.) With this latest blogging effort, the company is targeting social entrepreneurs.
"Over the last couple of years we've been working more closely with these types of entrepreneurs in this innovative space and what we wanted to do with our blog is basically bring that forward," Boehringer's Lilly Ackley told PMLive.
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