When AI Becomes Your Most Important Key Opinion Leader

In the pharma industry, Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) have for decades played a decisive role in how new products were discovered, understood, and recommended by doctors and specialists. The KOL strategy was, in its simplest form, about identifying and engaging the voices the market listened to—and making sure they understood and believed in the message.

But what do you do in a world where the new decision-makers are no longer humans, but machines?

Welcome to the LLM era.
And welcome to GEO: Generative Engine Optimization.

Large Language Models as the New KOLs

Large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are increasingly becoming the first (and last) place customers, patients, and decision-makers turn to for answers. And unlike traditional search engines, LLMs don’t give you a list of links—they give you a conclusion.

One answer.
One recommendation.

That means LLMs effectively function as a new kind of digital KOL:

• They have access to vast amounts of available information.

• They shape users’ understanding and choices.

• And they increasingly become the voice users choose to trust and listen to.

If your brand is not mentioned—or is described incorrectly—in this context, you are invisible. Just like a new drug that is never mentioned by specialists at an international congress.

The New Discipline: Being Relevant in the LLM’s Language and Memory

In the pharma world, companies worked strategically to equip KOLs with the right documentation, narratives, and published evidence. In the LLM world, the challenge is to provide the right data points, structures, and content that models can read, understand, and use.

This requires an entirely new set of capabilities:

• You need to understand how LLMs retrieve and weigh information.

• You need visibility into how your brand is being represented—and by whom.

• And you need to be able to act on that insight, not just with content, but with structure and strategy.

That is exactly what 3RD is built for. We help brands gain insight into how they are represented across LLMs—and, most importantly, how to become more relevant, more visible, and more frequently cited.

Why This Is Urgent

In pharma, it’s well known that changing perceptions and behavior can take years. That’s why companies start early—often long before a product is approved.

That mindset is now relevant for every industry.

If you wait to optimize your presence in LLMs until your competitors have already established themselves in the model’s “memory” and recommendations, you are already behind. Because algorithms remember. And they repeat what they have already learned.

Summary: Think Like Pharma, Act Like Tech

• Instead of identifying KOLs, you must identify your data points in LLMs.

• Instead of selling to humans, you must inform machines.

• Instead of classic SEO, you must work with GEO and ensure that AI sees and understands you before it answers your customers.

Pharma has known this for decades:
If you want to influence the choice, you must influence the storyteller.

That storyteller is now AI.

Want to know how your brand is presented in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity—and what you can do to influence it?
Get in touch. We help companies and agencies understand and win in the new AI-driven marketing landscape.