Ujwal Pyati
Scientific Strategy Practice Lead
W2O
Mixing Scientific Rigor with Analytics
Before Ujwal Pyati, PhD (generally called “Uj”) joined W2O in 2018, the agency had no scientific strategy capability. In two short years, Uj has built a best-in-class scientific strategy practice that sets W2O apart both in size and strength. And due to the value he has brought to clients by communicating the importance of science to patients and physicians, W2O invested in assembling a broader team with unparalleled science strategy capabilities across disciplines, including advertising, PR, IR, and medical communications.
Uj’s approach is a perfect marriage between scientific rigor and state-of-the-art analytics to inform multidisciplinary communications—reaching the right person at the right time. He’s taken full advantage of W2O’s proprietary data resources to inform strategy, tactics, and communications. Recently, a client tasked W2O with rebuilding the broken conversation between physicians and patients with a rare disease who were misdiagnosed and on the wrong treatment path. Through the use of social listening and behavior analysis, the team pinpointed the language that patients use to converse online about their disease. Paired with a comprehensive literature review to identify the language that researchers and HCPs were using, Uj and his team created a lexicon and conversation guide that allowed patients and physicians to speak the same language, secure the appropriate diagnosis, and align on a treatment path forward.
Uj is also always dreaming up novel ways to lead client communications workshops. One brainchild of his: An exercise that visually maps out competitive claims (both pre-market and in market) to evaluate their differentiation and relevance to target stakeholders. This exercise helps clients identify white space in the market, both in terms of content and language, allowing them to build out a smart and ownable story in a crowded marketplace.
Most recently, Uj has been working with an oncology client to develop story flows that speak to each specialist’s individual needs. Uj played a critical role in understanding how two different specialties would need to be connected in order for the patient to be prescribed the client’s product. His knowledge of the differences between the two specialties spurred the development of personalized segmented message flows and executions across both segments.
