Imagine developing a complex, multi-country innovation strategy in just five days — what normally takes months, compressed into a single, focused sprint. That’s exactly what happened when a major pet care brand partnered with Personia to strengthen the brand’s territories. Here’s the behind-the-scenes story of how speed, agility, and deep insights transformed the process, setting a new standard for research-driven innovation.
The challenge: high-speed innovation
The goal was to define the protection territories for a leading cat food brand, creating emotional and functional relevance for a specific segment of pet owners.
The focus: ideas, products, and prototypes.
The twist: the client needed to understand consumer expectations and emotional needs across three key Latin American markets — all under an extremely tight timeline.
Enter Personia: research without research
Personia’s synthetic personas are AI-powered profiles built on real-world data, able to simulate consumer and expert interactions 24/7. Instead of slow, traditional research steps like focus groups or expert interviews, Personia enables teams to test, learn, and iterate instantly.
The case journey: process flow
Day 1 — walking in consumers’ shoes
The team ran 8 insight sessions with 9 synthetic personas to explore how cat owners define protection — what it means for their cats, how food plays a role, and how they perceive competitors. This produced three insight layers: market, consumer, and brand.
Day 2 — territory creation
Using Day 1 insights plus brand documents, competitive analyses, and behaviorist reports, Personia helped generate 105 innovation territories — each a potential angle for product and brand development.
Day 3 — territory evaluation
The synthetic personas evaluated the 105 territories against criteria like:
- Consumer relevance
- Competitive differentiation
- Alignment with brand purpose and meaningful truths
- Opportunities to strengthen the current and future portfolio
By the end of the day, five winning territories emerged.
Day 4 — concept creation
From these five territories, the team developed 150 product concepts, including:
name, tagline, description, jobs to be done (JTBD), key features, strategic drivers, reasons to believe (RTBs), and expanded narratives to bring each concept to life.
Day 5 — concept validation
The final day combined traditional quantitative research with Personia’s rapid persona testing to evaluate all 150 concepts. The result: a clear, validated set of territories and concepts, ready for leadership decisions.
The impact
✅ Time saved: What normally takes months (due to recruitment, scheduling, and manual analysis) was completed in just five days.
✅ Broader reach: 8 virtual “focus groups” engaged 9 synthetic personas across three latin-american markets, without geographic or logistical barriers.
✅ Smarter decisions: The client avoided costly missteps by quickly testing and refining assumptions, ensuring the final strategy was both emotionally and functionally aligned with consumer needs.
Personia proves that research no longer has to be slow or expensive to be deep, nuanced, and actionable. By blending synthetic personas with agile processes, brands can innovate faster, reduce market risks, and create products and experiences that truly resonate.
