Shopping Power to Subject Recruitment

When BBK Worldwide announced its new online “shop” shop.BBKWorldwide.com at DIA as “an online resource where clinical research professionals can go to learn about, and purchase, a full range of patient recruitment products and services,” I really didn’t know what that meant. Shop? For recruitment? I assumed a web site redesign and filed it in my head as such.

I received photos of the shirts BBK Worldwide was giving away at DIA and I thought they were really creative. Fun. Interesting. Then I met Matthew Stumm, Creative Director at BBK Worldwide, who walked me through the new site. He explained that as a company that constantly develops creative campaigns and strategies for its clients to increase patient recruitment and retention into clinical trials, they wanted to get the word out about the things they were doing. In short, this services company  “wanted to productize the things we do,” said Stumm.

In productizing its services, Stumm applied the “online shopping” mentality to the site. So, someone can go and look at solutions, which are scalable from small to large programs, read more details, read reviews about the product, and look at what other products BBK offers that the “shopper” may be interested in. All services, I mean products, have a Request a Quote, which as any regular online shopper will know, goes into the Shopping Cart. Other items, which are actual touchable products, like an “About Clinical Research Studies” educational pamphlet, offer pricing in the online store.

Stumm noted that there is a lot of burden on the professionals at the sites, or CROs, or sponsors on knowing all the available solutions out there to help them along in their recruitment and retention goals. “They spend a lot of time discovering what is out there,” said Stumm. This site is something BBK hopes people will go to, browse, read the blogs for education or information, and maybe buy or request an online free quote.

This is very innovative, forward-thinking stuff for our more conservative industry. At DIA I spoke with a colleague who asked, “So what have you seen that’s interesting on the exhibit floor?” I explained BBK’s new web site and their idea. “Do you think this industry is ready for that?” was the response. We both looked in the direction of the BBK Worldwide booth. “I don’t know. But it’s pretty cool.”