Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Review: CVS (CVS) #53
I'm back with another review for the Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Review Project, with a review of the nation's biggest drugstore chain, CVS. CVS is #53 on the list, and in a lot of respects it's similar to RiteAid (#129) (RAD) which I reviewed a few months ago. CVS was founded back in 1963, quickly grew in the next year with 17 stores. In 1969 CVS was acquired by the Melville Corporation and for the next 25+ years was under that umbrella. In 1996, Melville Corporation restructured and CVS became its own stand alone corporation "CVS Pharmacy, Inc.".
No Corporate Blogs
Like it's competitor, RiteAid, CVS has no corporate facing blogs. In fact they have no blogs at all. As I highlighted with RiteAid's review, they could really benefit from some kind of marketing blog. Taking advantage of a totally wide open area and capitalizing upon it. No one (company wise) is communicating with senior citizens or their children who help them with their prescriptions.
I did some digging for CVS's CEO, Thomas M. Ryan, as well as other
executives like Chris W. Bodine and Larry J. Merlo. I couldn't find
any blogs related to them, either. CVS doesn't have any women on their
board of directors, so they wouldn't even benefit from the type of
press that RiteAid gets with their CEO, Mary Sammons.
CVS has adopted RSS feeds in their press release section, so at least there's a hint they understand some of the web technologies that are available. However, I doubt that it's CVS it's self that understands it, I believe its Thomson Financial that understands that.
Thomas Financial partners with a lot of these Fortune 500 companies to provide them with their "Corporate Information" area. You'll notice this because you are no longer on the corporation's site, your on "corporate-ir.net", and that's where you in turn see the press room's of these companies having RSS feed for their press room.
One last note as to why CVS should seriously consider a blog of some sort - opportunists are taking advantage of the CVS name and lack of their own blog. A ton of spammers have set up phony blogs with the CVS name and either are AdSense filled or redirect you over to a site for prescription drugs.
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For a full list of all the companies that have been researched so far, check out the Fortune 500 Blog Project. For the list of Fortune 500 blogs researched by Search Marketing Gurus, check out the Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Review category.
CVS doesn't have any women on their board? There is probably a need get networking with few Executive Biographies.
Posted by: Mr CV | March 14, 2008 at 01:34 PM
I just can't believe that such a succesful company lacks the sanity to develope their own blogs. I mean if corporate people want something that's money ..and in this case blogs would certainly bring in even more customers...which means even more $$. Anyway they are either content with what they earn (and that I trully cannot believe) or they have absolutely no understanding of the web posibilities.
Posted by: Dani | December 24, 2009 at 03:44 AM