AstraZeneca: Clipping its wings

Restricted access to video clips needs to be questioned.

The Site

AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceuticals company, has a Broadcast Centre on its international website that requires registration and vetting to access its content.

Broadcast Centre is a sub-section of the primary Media area and opens on a holding page explaining that the service provides broadcast-standard digital and tape video for journalists and is run by a ‘partner’, The NewsMarket. To view or order content prospective users must first register or log-in (if already registered) from a prominent panel on the page. It is made clear that while registration is free it is not automatic but subject to verification and approval. Existing subscribers of The NewsMarket do not need to re-register to use the site, which currently holds 125 AstraZeneca video clips, most of them free to use.

The Takeaway

In an age of rampant video-sharing networks it is either extremely prudent of AstraZeneca to restrict access to its corporate clips or unimaginatively short-sighted, depending on your viewpoint.

The case for prudence is partly also one of contact management: getting people to register and checking their bona fides builds up a list of journalists with a known interest in the company and/or industry. It also gives a degree of control, or at least monitoring, over use of the material. There are also likely to be contractual considerations because of the involvement of The NewsMarket, even though much of the material is free of charge.

On the other hand is the evidence of the enormous viral power of video-sharing and the active participation of some major companies on sites such as YouTube. Shouldn’t AstraZeneca be moving with the times as well as looking to engage other users of its site? While it thinks about that, perhaps it could usefully try a few controlled experiments in making video more freely available around the site. Why not integrate some of the clips into the Research section (currently a video-free zone) or give access to the corporate video in About us through an ‘open’ area of Broadcast Centre, and see what the response is?

First published on 26 June, 2007