03 · Synthetic research
Your market,
on call.
SONAR tests your ideas on synthetic consumer panels tuned to your real market, including a Red Panel built to attack them. Research answers in hours, not weeks.
Why it exists
The old focus group
- Weeks to recruit, schedule and moderate. Six to eight, if the calendar is kind.
- Small n. Eight strangers behind glass, generalized to a whole market.
- Biased by the room. The loudest voice bends the table; the moderator’s framing bends the rest.
SONAR, done honestly
- Training drift. Most AI panels answer from a model’s 2023 memory, not your market today.→ SONAR grounds every persona in live market data (sonar-pro).
- Sycophancy. Models are tuned to agree with the way you framed the question.→ An adversarial Red Panel is instructed to kill the idea, not flatter it.
- No surprise. A flatterer tells you nothing you did not already believe.→ Objections are ranked and quoted verbatim, never smoothed over.
Screen and pre-mortem in hours. Then validate the one decision that matters with real humans.
The case
A live readout: a dessert brand, before a single store opened.
Purchase intent · n = 25
The panel · 5 cohorts
Gen-Z · urban
Wants it, but allergic to anything that feels forced for TikTok.
Premium millennial
Buys quality, watches price. Fears paying premium for a donut and a scoop bought separately.
Foodie · early adopter
Tempted and exacting. Afraid it arrives melted, heavy, more mass than filling.
Impulse buyer
If it looks good, fast and within reach, buys without planning it.
The skeptic · Red Panel core
Smells the hype from a distance. A correct donut with correct ice cream at an inflated price.
The Red Panel · built to kill the idea
One objection, said five different ways.
“It reads as made-for-the-photo. I fear an industrial, lukewarm donut with average ice cream at premium-dessert prices.”
Red Panel · skeptic
“It looks great in the photo, then arrives melted and heavy. More show than flavor.”
Red Panel · foodie
“Feels like an invention for the feed, not something good to eat often. And they will charge extra just for being Instagrammable.”
Red Panel · premium millennial
“Probably a correct donut with correct ice cream at a badly inflated price.”
Red Panel · skeptic
Panel ran in Chilean Spanish, grounded in live market pricing. Verbatims translated; the unanimous phrase kept as-is, “más show que sabor”, meaning more show than flavor.
The Red Panel demanded substance. So the brand led with substance.
- Product
- LaunchedThe ice-cream-stuffed donut, named and shipped.
- Price
- $3.500CLP. The payable-premium ceiling the panel drew itself.
- Positioning
- Sell real quality, not for the photo. Generous, visible filling. What looks good is a consequence of being good.
How it works
Four steps, hours apart.
- 01
Define the market
Real category, real geography, real price reality. The brief anchors every persona to the market the brand will actually compete in.
- 02
Build the synthetic panel
Cohorts that mirror the real audience: early adopters, premium millennials, impulse buyers, and the ones hardest to please. Grounded in live market data, not a model’s memory.
- 03
Run plus the Red Panel
Every persona answers on desire, intent, naming and price. Then the adversarial Red Panel is told to break the idea. This is the antidote to a model that just agrees with you.
- 04
Synthesize
Scores, splits and verbatims collapse into one readout and one decision: ship, pivot, or kill. In hours, not weeks.
Stop guessing. Be sure.
The room is dead. The glass is dead. What survives is the idea that already answered its harshest critic.
SONAR has also read: greeting-card concepts, wine positioning, and talent screening.