Pfizer to GSK Websites Migration

Challenge

When GSK acquired Pfizer's Consumer Health Business (over-the-counter brands like Centrum, Caltrate or EmergenC), it became clear that the original Pfizer-branded websites all over the world needed to be rebuilt in the GSK website platform Adobe (AEM).

Our project scope included over 100 websites, covering 11 multinational brands with more than 2000 individual pages, written in 18 languages for 25 markets. Our task was to migrate the original websites and all their assets from the Drupal platform to Adobe (AEM), while meeting GSK digital standards, local market requirements, and maintaining all structured information for each brand and market. All of that in just 15 months.

Inspiration

Our original assumption was that each brand would have one website which would serve as a template for all the brand websites around the world.

As the project progressed, it turned out not be as simple as that. We needed to take all the different local market and brand needs into consideration. Many brand websites around the world did not share the same look and feel and did not follow the same pattern and structure of information and assets.

The task became a "like-for-like" migration, while keeping all information and assets from the original websites, as well as following the templated GSK digital standards approach.

Idea

That is when we thought of the component-, template-, theme-based Master to Localization approach.

We programmed web components and created a library called “Blueprint”. These components were used while building each of the individual websites, which significantly sped up the build process. New components were continuously added to the library to allow for the accurate migration of the majority of all original website assets.

We designed 11 Master websites to define the overall look and feel for each brand, the brand color theme, as well as key must-haves such as the GSK logo or Country Picker in the header or mandatory footer links which were then included in the local brand websites.

Project management played a key role in the whole project. Perfect team coordination, day-to-day capacity planning, hiring extra resources, such as native language speakers and people to transfer texts from the original websites into pre-prepared copy deck templates, was critical in keeping up with the very tight deadlines.

Growth

What an incredible journey and steep learning curve for everyone involved! We grew as individuals, as colleagues, and as partners to our agency HUBs in Dhaka, Delhi and Buenos Aires, as well as to our GSK global client. We learned a bit of Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish and a few words in many other languages. We managed to launch over 100 international websites just in 15 months. We are proud to say "Yes! We did it!"