Creating a launch positioning with the power to change ingrained HCP behaviour

Launching a new brand in podiatry means changing the habits of a specialised community of treaters who have managed their patients on familiar protocols for years. With no pharmacological options available until now, HCPs needed convincing that a groundbreaking product should become the new standard of care.

HCPs often assume treatment is working when patients gradually drop out of care. In reality, many of those patients are managing pain and making lifestyle accommodations on their own. The client needed a positioning that brought this dynamic to life and persuaded HCPs that changing their practice was worth the effort.

We built custom AI agents trained on the client’s brand strategy and past insights. They included HCP and patient personas alongside subject matter experts such as a behavioural scientist and a communications strategist. Working live with the client team and their comms agency, we used the agents to pressure-test early positioning ideas and refine the territories before validating them in research. Projective techniques grounded in cognitive science helped us uncover which territories had the power to change practice.

The agents surfaced new insights that made the territories more distinctive and grounded in the principles of behaviour change. Using them in workshops aligned the team around a strategic direction and built stakeholder confidence. As a result, only one round of human testing was needed, saving months of research time and an entire PMR project.