Where Linguistics Meets Marketing Research
At GURT 2026, Verilogue researchers Brandon Barr and Samantha Creel will explore how linguistic analysis plays a critical role in modern marketing research and brand strategy, drawing from real-world physician–patient conversations.
Linguistics in Practice: From Theory to Strategic Insight
Marketing research relies on language, often more than people realize.
From interviews and focus groups to message testing and social listening, understanding how people speak, frame experiences, and negotiate meaning is central to how brands connect with audiences. Linguistic training brings a unique lens to this work, uncovering patterns and insights that extend well beyond surface-level interpretation.
Samantha and Brandon share how linguistic frameworks are applied in marketing research to inform brand planning, engagement strategy, and healthcare communications.
What You’ll Learn
- Where linguistics already shows up in marketing research
- How discourse, framing, metaphor, stance, and narrative shape perception and behavior
- Why qualitative language data provides depth that quantitative measures alone cannot
- How linguistic insights translate into actionable recommendations for healthcare brands
This session demonstrates how language analysis helps identify unmet needs, barriers to understanding, and missed opportunities at the point of care.
Meet our GURT 2026 Speakers
Samantha Creel
I was born and raised in a rural area of Green Cove Springs, Florida before attending the University of Florida, graduating with a B.A. in Linguistics and a B.A. in Anthropology. I earned an M.A. in Applied Linguistics: TESOL at the University of South Florida before completing the Critical Language Scholarship for Arabic in Oman and a Fulbright in Bahrain. I attended the University of Florida again (Go Gators!) to complete a Ph.D. in Linguistics in 2022, specializing in corpus linguistics and second language acquisition of English and Arabic. I previously worked as a Senior Natural Language Analyst building conversational AI agents for businesses across different sectors.
I have been a Researcher at Verilogue since March 2024. In addition to our marketing insights projects, I also work on our Medical Affairs research, including Health Economics and Outcomes Research studies.
As a former ESL teacher, I love surprising people by pointing out interesting phonological phenomena they use every day but are often unaware of, like the ‘5 T’s’ of American English, or reductions (gotcha!).
Brandon Barr
I’ve been a Researcher at Verilogue since March 2025 and contribute to our marketing insights projects. I also collaborate on our research innovation team and have experience supporting our Digitas Health agency partners with linguistic insights for new business proposals.
My interest in linguistics started in my high school Spanish classes where I developed a fascination with how our brains process language. I’m a St. Louis native and I hold a B.S. in Linguistics from Truman State University. After graduating I moved to Madrid and worked as an EFL teacher before returning to the U.S. and obtaining my M.S. in Sociolinguistics from Georgetown University. At Georgetown, my research focused on Interactional Sociolinguistic and Critical Discourse Studies approaches to analyzing political discourse on food, health, and the environment in mainstream media.
When going out with friends, I always enjoy pointing out how restaurants use language to index their quality and authenticity (the more expensive the restaurant, the less adjectives you’ll find on their menus!).
Interested in working with our research team?
What do we do?
Conduct qualitative marketing research for (primarily pharmaceutical) clients who want to understand what’s happening between Health Care Providers (HCPs) and patients at the ‘point of care’ (PoC).
Who are our clients?
- Marketing teams (pharma) focused on a particular brand, for whom we provide reports (as PowerPoint slides).
- Medical Affairs teams (pharma + gov/prof orgs), often conducting Health Economics and Outcomes Research aiming to publish results in academic journals.
What makes us different?
- Other market research methods like interviews, surveys, and focus groups are valuable, but often rely on self-reporting/recall from both practitioners and patients
- World largest database of visit recordings [reveal] gives a “fly on the wall” view into real exam room interactions
- Our AI researcher tool, Vision, is the first of its kind and allow for detailed linguistic analysis at scale
World’s largest collection of over 250,000 real in-office physician-patient conversations: