Putting the ‘human’ back in human trials

Brand Strategy · Visual Identity · Content · Brand Collateral

Good science needs good people

Modern clinical research has a rather fundamental dependency on human beings. Without willing volunteers, even the most promising medical discoveries can only go so far. Clinical Research Philadelphia (CRP) certainly thought so. With nearly three decades of experience conducting clinical trials for some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, CRP knew the science.

But how do you convince people to “take one for the team” without conjuring up images of guinea pigs or worse? That was the brief. Make hard science more approachable, and clinical research feel less ‘clinical’.

Seven words. A fair bit of back and forth.

For starters, finding the right words took longer than writing them down.

We explored several directions for CRP’s central message, but the client kept bringing us back to one non-negotiable: the people participating in clinical trials had to be at the centre of the story. Fair enough. Without them, there wouldn’t be much clinical research to talk about.

Eventually, we arrived at seven words that said what we were all trying to get at.

The Future of Medicine Begins with You

CRP liked the line enough to trademark it. This people-first approach then shaped everything from the language used in online forms to social media communication, making CRP’s interactions with prospective participants clearer, more reassuring, and a lot less like reading a medical consent form.

More than one thing, clinical and creative

Blue, white, and red. A cross. Perhaps a heartbeat somewhere for good measure.

Healthcare branding comes with a fairly established set of visual conventions. We wanted CRP to look credible without becoming another variation on the same theme.

The refreshed identity retained the familiarity of blue but introduced warmer colours, a more approachable typographic system, and a symbol that seems to mean different things to different people.

Some see two crossed pills. Others see four people holding hands. Both interpretations work rather nicely for a clinical research organisation.

The visual system carried this balance across everything from recruitment posters and patient information to signage, stationery, and staff uniforms. Each application needed to feel professional enough for a research institution, but welcoming enough for someone walking into a clinical trial for the very first time.

A crash course in the human body

Writing about clinical research and medicine with our only credentials being regular binges of House M.D. and Grey’s Anatomy was something we weren’t prepared for. This was also before generative AI had become everyone’s unofficial research assistant so there was a fair amount of reading involved.

Our writers found themselves revisiting biology, physiology, and medicine, getting familiar with clinical trial terminology and learning how to explain complicated subjects without losing the people reading about them.

But that’s something we’ve always enjoyed about working across industries. We don’t arrive with fifteen years of preconceived ideas about how a clinical research organisation should communicate. We arrive with questions. Lots of them.

And by the time we’re ready to write, we’ve usually learned considerably more than anyone reasonably expected us to. The result was a body of blogs, educational content, and social communication that made complex medical subjects more accessible without treating readers like they couldn’t handle the science. Making something easier to understand isn’t the same as dumbing it down.

Shout out to r/ELI5 and r/Medicine for the assist.

Philadelphia, via India

There’s a small geographical detail we’ve neglected to mention. The entire engagement was managed remotely from India. Brand strategy, identity, collateral, content, and even advice on signage at CRP’s physical premises in Philadelphia. All handled without our team setting foot in the city.

We’d like to say this required some extraordinary feat of international coordination. Mostly, it required good conversations, clear decisions, and paying attention to the details.

The same things we’d expect from a project happening down the road.

Since our engagement, CRP has continued to grow, expanding beyond Philadelphia with a second location in New Jersey. It’s been lovely to see the organisation move forward, and the identity we helped create continuing to travel with it.

Turns out, being close to your clients has very little to do with geography.

Bigger ideas. Finer details.

TWO is where the wide view and fine line converge. Things that are often made to compete actually become stronger together.
That’s our bedrock.