Pre-test · Method · Decision
Test more, iterate more, fail sooner — to decide better.
From first instinct to the words that land. Pre-test a concept, a film, a radio spot, a print ad — with credible synthetic personas, calibrated to your real audience. Built to sharpen judgment, never to replace it.
Method over Magic.
Measurement still measures. What changes is how it meets the decision.
Between instinct and a full study, a layer was missing — too costly to exist. Synthetic personas change that: explore thirty directions where you once tested three. Put an instinct to the test in hours, before you commit a budget. Measurement still stands. What moves is the moment you decide.
Proof before promise.
Rank correlation between our calibrated scores and a reference field panel, across a six-concept test.
Published, peer-reviewed research — Information Fusion, Elsevier (2026).
At the top of insight — Ipsos, Kantar, past president of ESOMAR.
From strategy to the words that land.
Pre-test a concept, a film, a radio spot, a print ad — before you commit, and all the way to the final wording.
Find the direction
Test an instinct. Compare ten concept territories instead of three. Pressure-test a positioning against its alternatives — before you commit a creative or media budget.
Nail the promise
The direction is set. Now the hard part: the words. Compare versions of the message, the claim, the tagline — so the promise lands before you go to market.
Any stage
TV film, radio spot, print ad, product concept — as a storyboard, finished, or as a stimulus with its description. We test what you have, at any stage.
Everything you can pre-test.
One method, across the whole decision chain — from the earliest territory to the final word.
Concept testing
Compare and prioritize concept territories before committing to development.
Claim testing
Measure the believability, attribution and persuasive power of a claim.
Packaging testing
Pit packaging directions against each other on impact, legibility and perceived promise.
Advertising testing
Pre-test a film, a radio spot or a print ad — as a storyboard or finished.
Name testing
Measure the symbolic fit and reach of a name with your audience.
Value-proposition testing
Arbitrate between claims, promises and taglines — for the words that land.
Concept reframing
Rewrite and retest a concept until the idea truly lands.
Exploration & perception
Map perceptions, expectations and imaginaries around a subject or a brand.
Quantitative calibration
Replay your past studies to anchor synthetic scores to your field reality.
Quantitative to compare and prioritize; qualitative — 1:1 interviews and focus groups — to understand the why. Often both, from a single brief.
One brief. As many angles as the decision demands.
Insights, debriefs and client-ready reports — in hours, not weeks.
One brief
You describe your subject and your audience. Everything starts there — no heavy setup.
Quantitative study
Fifty to five hundred calibrated synthetic personas, to compare and prioritize.
1:1 interviews
In-depth one-on-one conversations, to understand the why behind the numbers.
Focus group
A simulated group dynamic, to surface tensions, agreements and weak signals.
This agility isn't a bonus — it's how the product works, and how we work: with clients and partners alike. Insights House, in Morocco, is one example: an agency bringing the method to its own market.
What you get — ready to present.
Not raw data to wrangle. A decision report, in hours.
An executive summary
Compared scores, the concept that wins, and why — in one read.
The verbatims that matter
The lines that explain the numbers, quoted and grouped by theme.
Recommendations
What to keep, rework or drop — and the next question to test.
Method over Magic.
It's not the models that deliver. It's the rigor of the protocol around them. Psychographic depth, calibration against the real world, a close watch on AI positivity bias, protocols versioned like questionnaires. We read relative gaps — which concept wins — far more than absolute scores.
The how is a conversation. With you, on your project.
Your studies as the benchmark.
This is our difference, and our discipline: a synthetic score is only worth as much as its fit to your field reality. So we test it against your own data — alongside your live studies, or by replaying one you've already run.
You bring a real study
A test already run with an institute, or a live field wave. That's your reference truth.
We replay it, identically
Same stimuli, same closed questions, same audience — with synthetic personas calibrated to your audience.
We measure the gap, rank by rank
On ratings and intent as much as on the psychographic profile. The calibrated score corrects AI's known tendency to over-state.
Rank correlation between our calibrated scores and a reference field panel, on a six-concept test. The validation threshold we hold to is 0.80.
Once alignment is established for your category, you test in hours what once took weeks — without starting from scratch at every decision.
An international food company puts the method to the test.
Six product concepts, pre-tested with synthetic personas calibrated to the target. The resulting ranking reproduced that of the reference field panel — a rank correlation of 0.94. Enough to decide in hours what used to take weeks.
And we say it plainly: where the stakes justify it, synthetic prepares and guides field validation. It doesn't replace it. It's an upstream decision layer — not a shortcut.
A read on the market.
Innovation that works, in service of the decision.
Dr Laurent Florès
Thirty years in insight — entrepreneur, practitioner, researcher
At Ipsos and Kantar (Millward Brown), in the US and across Europe. Founder of CRM Metrix, an early mover in the online research revolution twenty-five years ago. Past president of ESOMAR. Today, professor at Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas.
One thread runs through all of it: innovation that actually works in market. That's what FlashInsight is built on. It's also why he teaches — through L'Atelier IA, where practitioners and leaders take stock of what AI really changes for the decision.
His read on the market isn't a bet. It's thirty years in the field, paired with an active watch on the latest research.
Serious by design.
GDPR compliant
Explicit legal basis, purpose and retention period. Enforceable confidentiality.
A signature from the field
A method led by a past president of ESOMAR.
Your data stays yours
It is never used to train a model.
AI transparency
AI-generated content is always flagged as such.
What we get asked most.
What is a synthetic persona?
An AI-generated respondent calibrated to a real audience rather than made up. At FlashInsight, each persona is anchored on public data and official reference statistics (INSEE, US Census, Eurostat…), not on the model's imagination. The goal isn't to clone an individual, but to make each group behave like its real, observed counterpart.
Does FlashInsight replace market research or a research firm?
No. It's an intermediate layer in the decision — between instinct and the full field study — that couldn't exist before because it wasn't economically possible. It's built to explore, compare and prioritize earlier, before committing budget. For high-stakes decisions, a complementary field study is still recommended. A tool to sharpen judgment, never to replace it.
What can you pre-test, and in which formats?
Concepts, films, radio spots, print ads, names, claims, positioning, packaging. Stimuli can be image, video, audio, PDF or text — from storyboard to finished film. Quantitative studies on 50–500 personas, or 1:1 qualitative interviews and focus groups, from a single brief.
Are the responses credible? How are personas calibrated?
Credibility doesn't come from AI magic — it comes from the rigor of the protocol. Personas are calibrated to the reality of the targeted market: psychographic depth, population structure from official statistics, a close watch on AI positivity bias. Every respondent keeps a full, line-by-line exportable trace: the panel is auditable, not a black box. And we benchmark our results against real data: on a concept test run with an international food company, the ranking of our calibrated scores and that of a field-study benchmark show a Spearman correlation of 0.94.
When should you use a synthetic pre-test?
Upstream, when the cost or timing of a classic study would stop you from testing at all. It's the moment to go from three options to thirty, to explore before committing, to iterate on the right questions sooner. And downstream, to finalize the words that carry the promise — the copy, the claim, the exact wording.
What are the limits?
A synthetic pre-test measures calibrated attitudinal orientations, not lived experience. It doesn't replace first-hand experience on emotionally charged topics. Results are projections to decide earlier — not factual truths, nor a guarantee of performance. We work first on relative gaps (which concept wins) more than on absolute scores.
How do you get started?
From a brief — short or fully framed. We discuss it directly, scope the perimeter, timing and deliverable, and you get a client-ready output in hours, not weeks.
A project in mind? Let's talk.
Concept, campaign, positioning, promise — let's see what the method can surface.
Discuss a project