OVERVIEW
British pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline started small: A pharmacy in London opens in 1715. Another one in Philadelphia in 1830. An English laxative maker gets things moving in 1842. A New Zealand trading company kicks open its doors 31 years later.

Slowly, the roots have grown together, picking up other businesses, amenities (the first factory building with electricity in England’s Merseyside!), and new products (dried milk powder) along the way to become the pharmaceutical behemoth that pulled in $44.6 billion in revenue last year after two trips around the calendar with revenue losses. More than 35 percent of those dollars came from U.S. consumers and the boost in revenue is attributed to the dreaded H1N1 virus that had people living in fear early in 2009.

WEBSITE
In order to keep those customers satisfied and informed—and help the company meet its tiny little stated goal “to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer” —GlaxoSmithKline uses its Web site to get out the word and is starting to experiment with social media.

On the front page of the site, GSK.com, there is the image of someone riding a bike on a hilly dirt road with his or her feet stuck up in the air. Wheee! Unfortunately, his or her head is chopped off at the top of the frame. (Perhaps GSK makes a drug for that?)

The words “Do more, feel better, live longer” are emblazoned across the screen, feeding into every desire humans tend to have without mentioning sex. Right up front, the site puts prominent links (with images to boot) to its annual report from 2009 and to its first-quarter report from 2010. Next to these images is a link for “GSK supports fight against Malaria,” which leads to a small section chronicling the many things GSK is doing to help find a cure for malaria, which kills between one and three million people each year.

On the bottom of the screen, the site simply provides links to news and announcements. That is followed by a larger area devoted to “Fighting lymphatic filarsis.” The company smartly calls attention to a plethora of goodwill causes throughout the site, perhaps to offset any ill feeling that arises from dealings with a megabillion-dollar corporation by a public that is suffering in a difficult financial time.

Even in some of its section titles—such as “Collaborations, ” “Responsibility,” and “Our work with communities” —the suggestion is clear that this company Cares About You (and Don’t You Forget It). Even in its “Our products” section, it breaks down into four subsections: prescription medicines, consumer healthcare, vaccines, and “Viiv Healthcare,” which is all about advances in treatment and care for HIV communities.

Each and every one of its products, from Adartrel to Zyban, gets its own Web page, though the pages don’t appear to have tons of information on them.

SOCIAL MEDIA
GSK has set up a Facebook page (mostly for announcements) and a Twitter feed for its global GSK brand and its US subsidiary. Certain GSK products get their own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts as well. This is a little bit of a dangerous area for GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies because it still isn’t clear from the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. how it will permit big pharma and medical-procedure companies to interact with consumers on the social Web. The FDA started a one-year, fact-finding mission last November to try and figure out this issue.

Glaxo’s Nicorette smoking-cessation brand get its own Facebook page and Twitter page in order to tweet out such info to its more than 2,000 followers such as “Let's face it, #QuittingSucks! The Nicorette mini Lozenge is a brand-new way to make quitting suck less” and “Once you've been smoke-free for just three weeks, your chance of a heart attack will begin to decrease #NicoFact.”

While it’s not solved just yet, GlaxoSmithKline went ahead and built Facebook presence (more informational than interactive or consumer-engaging) for some of its larger products such as Zantac, Paxil, and Dexedrine. One hopes not too much effort is put into these, though, since the three pages collectively have 10 people who “like” them. So much for the teeming masses. You’d think some curious hipsters would have found their way to the Dexedrine page at least.

Interestingly, the GlaxoSmithKline doesn’t push consumers who visit each drug’s page on the company’s corporate website in the direction of signing up for the Facebook page or Twitter account, where applicable.

If nothing else, the company is putting itself in place to be ready when the FDA finally decides whether social media is something pharmaceutical companies can engage in with consumers or not. The Twitter account for its U.S. division, @GSKUS already has almost 4,000 followers. And the company’s @GlaxoSmithKline global Twitter account appears to be a placeholder account, with 400+ followers and nary a tweet to date. Meanwhile, its official Facebook page has more than 3,500 fans.

Once a company with nearly 100,000 employees and with hundreds of products begins to put more energy behind social media, you can be sure those numbers will grow rapidly. For now, though, GlaxoSmithKline’s Web presence does a good job of promoting the brand’s image as a corporation that takes all those big revenues and is eager to reach and help as many people as possible, no matter the cost—and the FDA fuzziness on its ability to interact and respond.