David Kerner
Director, Strategy
PRECISIONeffect
Understanding “The Why” Behind Behavior
David Kerner is a proud “behavioral nerd.” He grew up in a family of academics—math, theater, and political science professors. He has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology. He also worked in multiple university labs ranging in focus from infant perception to visual and auditory cognition.
In a nutshell, David loves explaining people’s behavior through several lenses (behavioral sciences, cognitive studies, and biology). This landed him an early gig in patient recruitment for clinical trials working with companies such as Pfizer, Biogen, and Takeda. He eventually left for Hill Holiday where he worked with a Novartis brand that challenged him to develop meaningful insights and connections within the juvenile arthritis community. For example, David on multiple occasions attended the national juvenile arthritis conference with a life-sized, paper mache giraffe, “Hope,” and encouraged pediatric patients to share words of encouragement with other members of the community on Hope’s spots. These warm wishes were distilled into stories and insights to improve caregivers’ preparedness to manage the deep struggles of caring for a child with juvenile arthritis.
Now at PRECISIONeffect, David has led strategy for a range of diverse clients including digital therapeutics, oncology, rare disease, and neuromuscular diseases. His approach to surfacing insights proved invaluable to developing the unbranded “gMG Never Rests” campaign. His qualitative and quantitative research unearthed how deeply gMG impacts even those who are considered “well controlled.” Using this understanding, David helped coin “uncontrolled gMG” to illustrate a group of misunderstood patients who stand to benefit greatly from improving their conversation with HCPs and taking additional steps in their therapy.
David has also developed approaches for evaluating and responding to physician bias and how it appears along the treatment journey. Through a series of workshops, he set out to give agency members tools to identify behaviors among physicians and patients that are challenges, such as doctors feeling comfortable with the status quo, and to develop solutions that combat objections.
“All agencies talk about human behavior, biases, etc., but David goes to the next step,” says Katie Perkinson, SVP, Brand Strategy, PRECISIONeffect. “He helps others get beyond identifying the problems to strategically designing solutions based on counter-biased thinking.”
