CASE STUDY
Sanofi Legacy
Building a Monument to Modern Healthcare
Sanofi hired the Content Workshop Experiential Studio to showcase the rich role Canada played in the company’s worldwide healthcare innovation, from early rabies vaccines to insulin innovation to COVID-19 support.
This project required deep storytelling, extensive curation, and the integration of archival assets, all wrapped in a modern, engaging user interface. The collaboration leaned heavily on Content Workshop’s expertise in experiential web design, ensuring the final product was both visually striking and intuitively navigable.
Problem
Turning a Century of Science into a Story
Sanofi Legacy faced a formidable challenge: how to distill over one hundred years of pharmaceutical innovation, research, and discovery into an engaging digital experience that resonated with both scientific audiences and the general public. Much of their history was scattered across archival photographs, written accounts, and institutional memory. The company needed a platform that could weave these threads into a cohesive narrative, making the science accessible without losing the gravity and importance of its contributions. The site needed to do more than display facts—it had to evoke the sense of wonder and curiosity that drives scientific progress. Compounding this, Sanofi’s legacy included complex stories like the Toronto-based breakthroughs in penicillin, which involved everything from early laboratory techniques to the use of horses for cultivating bacteria. Capturing these nuances required careful research, curation, and a fresh approach to digital storytelling.
Solution
Content Workshop approached the project as both technologists and curators. “Sanofi is proud of their Canadian heritage, so we wanted to make something you’d see in a museum,” said Ryan Payne, head of the Content Workshop Experiential Studio. “We worked with their on-site historian to catalog hundreds of archival photos, scientific documents, and personal narratives. It’s a living, interactive piece of history.”
The centerpiece of the solution was an interactive timeline, designed to mirror the feel of a world-class museum exhibit. Visitors could explore a historical overview of the company’s events, people, and innovations, or click into major milestones on the timeline, each offering rich, story-driven content and striking visuals. Every element—layout, navigation, and information hierarchy—was crafted to invite exploration and make the content feel alive.
By cataloging assets and structuring the site as a “living timeline,” the Experiential Studio enabled Sanofi to transform static history into an ongoing conversation about innovation. To keep the history alive long into the future, the Experiential Studio also built custom content management tools that allow Sanofi’s team to continually expand the archive.
Results
From Archives to Interactive Impact
The Sanofi Legacy Project successfully reimagined how a pharmaceutical company’s history could be experienced online. The new site not only preserved over a century’s worth of breakthroughs, but also made them accessible to a broader audience—scientists, students, and the curious public alike. The interactive timeline became a resource, serving as both an internal archive for Sanofi and a public-facing monument to Canadian scientific achievement. Most importantly, Sanofi now had a flexible, expandable platform for sharing its ongoing innovations, ensuring its legacy would continue to inspire future generations.
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