Synthetic Personas:

Test against real segments without the ad spend.

Synthetic personas built from real behavioral data. Validated against real respondents. And interpreted by the team with the judgment to tell you what it all means.

The Problem

Testing messaging and creative is expensive. Traditional ad testing requires recruiting real respondents every time, running panels, managing logistics, and waiting weeks for results. By the time you get answers, the market has moved.

Worse, most ad testing tells you what happened. It rarely tells you why. You learn that Version A outperformed Version B, but not what drove the preference or how to make Version C better.

And now there is a new problem. A wave of synthetic persona tools has arrived promising to solve the cost and speed issues. Some of them are genuinely good at the technical layer. But they all share the same blind spot.

They give you the data. Nobody tells you what to do with it.

A synthetic persona can tell you how Segment B responded to your tagline. It cannot tell you whether Segment B is the right audience to pursue, whether the tagline aligns with your competitive positioning, or whether the insight contradicts what your analytics are showing. That requires judgment. And judgment is the part that does not come in the platform.

How the Personas are Built

Our synthetic personas are not fictional characters. They are not profiles that someone imagined and fed to a language model. They are built from real consumer data through a rigorous process.

Built from real research data

Every persona starts with actual respondents. Surveys, behavioral data, attitudinal profiles. Real people answering real questions. The personas are built through statistical analysis and segmentation of real consumer data.

Quality controlled at every layer

The personas go through multiple rounds of evaluation for accuracy, consistency, and bias before they reach you. Every persona ships with documentation of how it was built, how it performed in validation, and where the boundaries are. This is not a black box.

Validated against real respondents

Every persona is tested against a control group of real people. We run the same questions through both the synthetic personas and a sample of actual respondents, then measure how closely the responses align. You get empirical evidence that the personas represent reality. Not a trust-us claim. Proof.

The Strategic Layer: What Happens After the Data

This is where most synthetic persona offerings stop. The personas are built. The dashboard is live. Good luck.

We start where the tools leave off.

We scope what to test

Most teams test the wrong things. They test what is easy to test rather than what matters. Before a single persona interaction happens, we define the business decision the research needs to inform. What is the strategic question? What would change your plan? What would confirm it? We design the test around the decision, not around the tool.

We connect it to the bigger picture

Persona testing does not exist in isolation. The insights feed into your product strategy, your go-to-market approach, your pricing decisions. We map what the personas are telling you back to the three growth levers that drive every engagement we run: audience growth, pricing power, and repeat engagement. The persona data is one input. Your growth strategy is the output.

We design the research

Which segments to test against. What stimuli to use. How to structure the questions so you get signal, not noise. This is research design, not prompt engineering. It draws on the same methodology we bring to every engagement: 20+ years and 40,000+ hours of understanding how people actually think, decide, and behave.

We stay with you

The best persona programs are not one-off tests. They are ongoing systems. As your market shifts, your messaging evolves, and your competitive landscape changes, the personas can be updated and the testing can continue. We provide the ongoing strategic advisory that keeps the insights connected to your decisions over time.

We interpret the results

A persona telling you that Segment B prefers Version A is a data point. Knowing that Segment B is your highest-LTV cohort, that Version A conflicts with your current brand positioning, and that your competitor just launched something similar is the context that turns a data point into a decision. We synthesize across the persona results, your business context, your competitive landscape, and what we know about your customers to deliver the strategic recommendation. Not a report. The answer.

How We Work With You

1. Define the decision.

We start with the business question. What are you trying to decide? What would you do differently based on the answer? Every engagement maps to a real decision.

4. Deliver the strategic answer.

We analyze the results in context. You get the recommendation, the evidence behind it, and the confidence to act. Not a dashboard. A decision.

2. Build the personas.

We gather the research data, build the synthetic personas through our validated methodology, and confirm they accurately represent your target segments.

5. Iterate and compound.

New questions emerge. Markets shift. Competitors move. The personas are always available for the next round. The strategic context accumulates with every engagement.

3. Design and run the tests.

We scope what to test, design the research, and run your messaging, creative, or positioning against the personas. You can test as many variations as you want. No recruiting. No scheduling. No panel costs.

Use Cases: What You Can Test

Messaging and Positioning

Test how different customer segments respond to your value proposition, taglines, and key messages before you commit to a campaign. Understand not just which version wins, but why, and what to try next.

Competitive Positioning

Understand how your target segments perceive your brand relative to competitors. Identify the gaps and opportunities that matter most to each audience.

Creative Concepts

Evaluate ad creative, landing pages, and marketing materials against validated consumer profiles. Get the depth of qualitative insight at the speed of automated testing.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Test market entry approaches, channel strategies, and launch messaging against the specific consumer segments you are targeting.

Product Concepts

Explore how different segments react to new product ideas, features, or pricing strategies before you invest in development.

Why this is Different

Synthetic persona platforms are getting good at the technical layer. We use them. We respect what they do.

But a platform cannot tell you what to test. It cannot read your competitive landscape. It cannot walk into your stakeholder meeting and reframe the question because the data revealed something nobody expected. It cannot connect what Segment B said about your tagline to what your analytics show about retention in that cohort.

The data collection layer is being commoditized. The strategic layer is becoming more valuable, not less.

We operate above the tools. We bring the judgment that sits on top of the data. That is what 40,000+ hours of customer insight across 19 countries builds. And it is the one thing that cannot be automated.

Best For

Marketing teams spending heavily on ad testing and concept research who want faster cycles, lower cost, and sharper strategic interpretation.
Brand teams that need to test positioning and messaging across multiple segments without running a new panel every time.
Product teams evaluating concepts and features against validated consumer profiles before committing development resources.
Market research teams looking to augment traditional methods with scalable, always-on consumer testing and strategic advisory.
Organizations entering new markets who need to understand unfamiliar consumer segments quickly and make confident go-to-market decisions.

Data Practices & Security

Your data stays yours. We never use client data to train or improve AI models. All data remains strictly confidential under our standard agreements.

GDPR and privacy compliant. All data handling follows Privacy by Design principles with encrypted transmission and storage, role-based access control, and controlled retention.

Full transparency. If we use AI tools in any part of an engagement, you will know. Every persona ships with documentation of how it was built, how it was validated, and where the boundaries are.