The Need for Instant Insights at Scale
This article series explores the role of synthetic research and data in this speed to action.
Competitive advantage hinges on speed. Decision cycles that once spanned quarters are now expected to resolve in days—sometimes hours. By the time a team syncs up for their weekly status meeting, the moment of opportunity may already have passed. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s the new operating reality. Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend and Strategy Survey found that “demonstrating ROI” (69%) and “revenue generation” (59%) are marketers’ top priorities, yet average marketing budgets have dropped to 7.7% of total company revenue—a 15% year-over-year decline (Gartner, 2024). This combination of shrinking resources and rising expectations leaves little room for drawn-out research cycles. Insight delayed is advantage denied.
More fundamentally, time—not money—has become the most constrained resource in enterprise decision making. McKinsey reports that senior executives spend nearly 40% of their working hours making decisions, yet over 60% of that time is considered ineffective. For a typical Fortune 500 company, this inefficiency can cost up to $250 million annually in lost productivity (De Smet, Jost, & Weiss, 2023). The implication for marketing teams is clear: every hour spent wrangling unstructured data from a legacy dashboard is an hour not spent crafting meaningful, timely experiences. Synthetic data and personas—by generating ready-to-analyze, “plausible people” on demand—help eliminate that bottleneck. Instead of waiting weeks for customer feedback or panel insights, marketers can simulate interactions and test hypotheses within hours.
At the same time, customers have little patience for brand experiences that feel generic or out of step with their needs. As Harvard Business Review has cautioned, over-reliance on slow, outdated inputs leads to “engineered insincerity”—where automation mimics empathy but fails to deliver relevance (Scheibenreif, 2023). Personalization at scale only works when underlying signals are updated continuously. Otherwise, yesterday’s segmentation becomes today’s churn trigger. This makes the case not just for synthetic speed, but for synthetic adaptability. As this book will argue, synthetic personas and data—when governed responsibly—enable marketing teams to move at the pace of customer expectation, not just campaign calendars.
References
De Smet, A., Jost, P., & Weiss, L. M. (2023, August 30). How to make better decisions in the age of urgency. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-guide-to-excelling-as-a-ceo/how-to-make-better-decisions-in-the-age-of-urgency
Gartner. (2024, May 29). CMO Spend Survey 2024: Proving ROI and Driving Growth With Less. Gartner, Inc. https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/research/cmo-spend-survey
Scheibenreif, D. (2023, October 2). Personalization at Scale Requires Real-Time Customer Data. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/10/personalization-at-scale-requires-real-time-customer-data