Customer stories · Global transportation leader, 3 mins

How Artificial Societies advised a global transportation leader on policy positioning in Washington, D.C.

Challenge

How should a global transportation leader position its policy narrative with Washington’s opinion leaders?

Artificial Societies supported a global transportation leader on a confidential project to test its policy narrative with the Washington, D.C. opinion-leader ecosystem: lawmakers, regulators, journalists and advocacy groups. The client needed to know which version of its narrative would land before committing to one. But the topic was highly sensitive and it would not have been possible to test these alternative messages with the intended audience of policy influencers using traditional research methods. Putting draft messages in front of this audience would have changed the very debate the client was trying to understand.

How will D.C. opinion leaders react to our narrative?
Which frames and proof points build trust and credibility?
How do reactions differ by party, gender and role?
What holds up under damaging coverage?

Solution

Large-scale narrative testing in a bespoke society of D.C. opinion leaders

The client needed to test freely, at scale, without a single message reaching a real stakeholder. To achieve this, we built a bespoke artificial society of 1,500 AI personas, each matched one-to-one to a real individual using public data and social activity.

Washington D.C. Opinion Leaders
A specialised society representing the lawmakers, regulators, journalists, advocates and industry voices who draft, interpret and debate national policy, spanning more than 360 organisations and 800 distinct job titles.
1,500 personas

We ran a series of surveys and experiments across three phases: baseline attitudes, blind testing of two competing narratives and associated proof points, then exposure to damaging news coverage and hypothetical scenarios. Because every persona is simulated, we could run frames in isolation, repeat tests and push into worst-case scenarios that would never be put to a real audience. Insights were captured at both an aggregate and individual persona level, enabling detailed analysis by audience segment, narrative and proof point.

Impact

A stress-tested narrative backed by 250,000 unique responses

Artificial Societies delivered insights backed by 250,000 individual responses from personas, derived from more than 170 questions across three phases. We diagnosed a standing credibility gap, identified the strongest narrative and proof points, and showed exactly where each held up or collapsed under negative coverage. Results were delivered as a flagship advisory report, with recommendations on positioning, proof points and risk supported by the data. Alongside it, the client had full access to the Artificial Societies platform to run every analysis themselves, from segment cuts to individual persona reactions. This depth of testing could not have been done with real stakeholders without exposing the client. Artificial Societies delivered results in 3 weeks, with no message ever reaching a live audience.

1,500
AI personas created
250,000
Responses
170+
Questions fielded

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