The challenge
The team behind a breakthrough OSA treatment recognized a disconnect between their internal target patient profile and the way physicians identified candidates in the real world. Physicians were instinctively thinking of the product for a patient type who was infrequently seen in practice and didn’t align with the brand’s long-term commercial goals. To shift behavior and increase adoption, the brand needed to identify the specific phrases and visual triggers that would help physicians pinpoint the right target in practice.
We knew a traditional, static approach wouldn’t be enough: we had to move beyond probing on words on a page and create a more real-world, nuanced portrayal of how patients look, talk, and feel in-clinic.
The method
We took a multi-pronged approach to ensure the brand’s strategy layered on critical real-world nuances:
Worldbuilding: We conducted physician interviews alongside a visual artist who sketched the patient in real-time. This interactive process motivated physicians to move past surface-level clinical descriptions; as they saw the character take shape, they were inspired to share the nuanced, real-world characteristics the team hadn’t previously identified.
Workshopping: Following the interviews, our team led a cross-functional workshop to identify consistent, differentiated, and on-strategy patient attributes observed during research.
Digital AI personas: Using the output from the workshop, we created 4 distinct personas using AI video avatars, each conveying the characteristics and trigger words we identified previously. Physicians gave live reactions to these realistic personas in interviews, allowing us to pinpoint the exact attributes that most triggered them to suspect OSA and think of our client’s brand.
The impact
The output of this research identified the exact characteristics and trigger words needed to identify these patients in practice and prompt physicians to think of this specific brand. These insights were successfully integrated into the overarching global strategy, helping the brand transition from new entrant to market leader in this category.
“The patient articulation research refined our understanding of who the target patient is in the eyes of his HCP, and helped inform the dialogue that our nearly 2K sales reps deliver to unlock care for patients like him.”
Marketing Director, Top 10 Global Pharma
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