A Touchy, Pfeely Pfizer

If you haven't been to the world's biggest drug company's homepage recently you might want to check it out. It used to be very corporate and stodgy. But earlier this month,

the website got a facelift. A Pfizer spokesman says the re-do was based on feedback that the old site was too difficult to navigate, especially when it came to getting information on

existing products and drugs in the development pipeline. Andy McCormick told me, "It's warmer, it's more emotional. We're trying to send a different message about the

company." That message begins with a video vignette at the top of the homepage featuring people of every color accompanied by what I would describe as a kind of jazzy, world music. It

ends with the new tagline: "Progress. Promise. PFIZER." (The caps are theirs.) McCormick says G2 Branding & Design, part of the WPP Group , came up with the whole thing.

Investors, of course, hope it's not just window dressing. They want and need the company to make good on its promise to show progress in the challenged pipeline and product portfolio.

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