On October 22, 2008, I was sitting in a popular session at the MarketingProfs Digital Mixer, hosted by the legendary CC Chapman. CC’s topic focused on the corporate use of online video — something I recapped in a cleverly-named post: CC Chapman on Online Video
At the end of the session, a woman asked how a pharmaceutical company like the one she worked for could use online video. She understood how it could be used for business-to-consumer applications. She understood how companies who sold business-to-business could use it. Her question was how to use video in an industry that was regulated by the Food and Drug administration (FDA).
As a New Media Evangelist who helps companies tell their stories online, I run into this question constantly. If it’s not the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry, it’s FINRA for the financial industry, or the FTC for publicly traded companies.
So I went on a quest. My goal was to find a company who works in a regulated industry yet was using New/Social Media successfully. What I found was more than I could have expected.
I found Johnson & Johnson, a 123 year old, $64 billion holding company that had not only been using YouTube successfully, but that it had two blogs, Kilmer House and JNJ BTW, a Twitter account, and was experimenting with a Facebook Group. And as I studied the series of events that transpired to enable this success, I stumbled upon a road map that any company can use to develop its Social Media strategy.
Here I present the results of my research in my latest e-book: