Two of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies have launched public blogs that are intended to be channels to engage with US consumers on specific issues.

The two companies – GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson – have clear but different goals for their new blogs.

GSK’s alliConnect:

alliConnect is GlaxoSmithKline’s official corporate blog for alli. It’s a place for you to have a conversation with us about weight loss issues.

JNJ’s JNJ BTW (which stands for By The Way):

Everyone else is talking about our company, so why can’t we? There are more than 120,000 people who work for Johnson & Johnson and its operating companies. I’m one of them, and through JNJ BTW, I will try to find a voice that often gets lost in formal communications. This is a big step for us as a company. Anyone working for a large corporation will appreciate that there are many internal limitations on what we say and how we say it.

Bold moves by these two companies.

I often hear that the pharmaceutical industry is one where social media has little place because of regulatory issues limiting open communication.

I hear similar arguments about companies in the financial services industry.

GSK and JNJ illustrate that such fears are out of proportion to what you can do (and JNJ pioneered social media with the AcuVue podcast launched in 2005). They’ve looked at what’s possible rather than what’s not.

Via Toby Bloomberg who has an excellent initial review of both blogs.