The most expensive study is the one that isn’t used.
by Steffen Becker und Reha Yildirimman
Synthetic Personas: Is the Gold Rush Hype Justified?
Synthetic personas have been a hot topic in consumer research for a while now. AI agents that behave like target audiences, that you can question, that respond. Teams love the idea because it promises research with no lead time. But anyone focusing solely on the tool is missing the real problem:
60 percent of German companies make little or no use of their data potential (Bitkom, 2024). Only 53 percent of marketing decisions are actually influenced by available analytics (Gartner, 2023). Organizations do a lot of research. Decisions are still made on gut feeling.
Steffen Becker
“Decision-making processes are often simply not designed to incorporate evidence. Anyone who thinks a new tool will solve this problem hasn't learned anything from 20 years of knowledge management.”
A New Perspective on the HOW of Research
Before we talk tools, there's a more uncomfortable question: How are decisions actually made in our organization? And what does it take so that the person with the best evidence wins, not the one who argues the loudest? We call this work on structures and processes Research Integration.
Once those questions are answered, it's worth looking at tools. AI agents go far beyond synthetic personas: A data gap finder checks every question against the knowledge base and reveals where we have evidence — and where we've been guessing for years. Making data accessible, structured, and usable through agents is what we call Research Mining.
The two go hand in hand — one without the other fizzles out. Ultimately, what matters is how an organization deals with what it does (and doesn't) know.
Want to know what your organization knows but isn't using — and where the blind spots are? We'll show you.
Just e-mail Steffen Becker or Reha Yildirimman.
