Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – AstraZeneca
This article forms part of a study on social media usage amongst FTSE 100 companies.
Each company in the FTSE 100 index was reviewed on its usage of such social media tools as RSS feeds*, blogs, online video, podcasts and social media platforms like Flickr and Facebook on its main website and on occasion, on websites of well-known subsidiary companies.
*RSS feeds are a simple way of delivering fresh versions of a website’s content to online readers automatically.
According to the Guardian.co.uk Business Glossary:
“The FTSE 100 index comprises the 100 most highly capitalised blue chip companies on the London Stock Exchange, representing approximately 81% of the UK market.”
Here’s how leading pharmaceutical group, AstraZeneca (AZN.L) measured up.
| FTSE 100 Company | RSS | Podcast | Blog | Online Video | Audio | Facebook, Flickr, etc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AstraZeneca | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No |
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Online Video/Webcasts: Yes
Full Year Results Announcement, broadcast footage, sign up required for both
Usage of Social Media platforms: No
(Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg etc)
According to Yahoo! Finance:
“In 1999, the British company, Zeneca plc, and the Swedish company, Astra, merged to form AstraZeneca, one of the world leaders in the pharmaceutical industry. The British group finishes and sells various medicines to pharmacies and hospitals. It operates in seven major therapy fields: anesthesia, cardiology, gastroenterology, pneumology, oncology, neurology and infection.”
Commentary:
Finally, a FTSE 100 company with an RSS news feed on its home page! AstraZeneca, I salute you!
Broadcast footage of AstraZeneca and access to a photo library requires registration first though, a bit of a letdown. Here’s the accompanying notice:
AstraZeneca has partnered with The NewsMarket to provide journalists with broadcast-standard video – delivered digitally (though we also deliver tapes for video orders). To maintain the quality and performance of our service, this section is password protected and can only be accessed by journalists and a select group of users.
Not very engaging at all. Few online users register to view information unless it is absolutely critical that they do so; they’d much rather pay with their attention instead.
AstraZeneca is inadvertently alienating its site users by demanding that publicly available information is hidden behind a registration wall.
Transparency is a big issue for large pharmaceutical companies and making publicly available information easily accessible should be a priority.
Admittedly, the AstraZeneca website clearly informs the user that viewing broadcast footage requires registration first, which is nice.
Recommendations:
- Make it easy to share publicly available information about AstraZeneca – as mentioned above, registration is required to view broadcast footage of AstraZeneca, view pictures from its photo library and view its annual results webcast. A much smarter move would be to make these freely available from astrazeneca.com and allow them to be indexed by search engines like Google. They can then be found easily by people looking up information on AstraZeneca.
- Put up a Flash video version of the 5 Minute Video Introduction to AstraZeneca - the corporate AstraZeneca site is heavy on company strategy and direction but light on company history. Converting the 5 Minute video introduction to AstraZeneca currently available for download to Flash would make it more accessible to web users. Using a web video hosting service that supports embeddable video would allow consumers watching it to share and disseminate it for the brand.
………………
What do you think?
Are you a customer, employee, shareholder or stakeholder of AstraZeneca? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this review. What would you like to see AstraZeneca doing more of in terms of social media? More online video? A CEO blog, perhaps?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Need any help?
Do you work for AstraZeneca and want some insight into some of the ideas published here?
Or perhaps you look after marketing for AstraZeneca and would like a quick chat about putting some of those recommendations into practice. Contact us.
Related posts:
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Admiral Group
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – British American Tobacco
- Social Media Usage amongst FTSE 100 companies – Companies 6 To 10: Antofagasta to Barclays
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – Barclays
- Social Media Usage in the FTSE 100: Company Profile – CADBURY ADR
