More than 100 visitors. One key question: how do you make better marketing decisions, faster?
At NIMA Marketing Day 2026, Stefan Peters of Haystack Consulting took the stage with a session that hit close to home for many marketers. Whether you work in B2C or B2B, the pressure is the same: more data, more AI tools, more noise. And yet the big question remains stubbornly hard to answer. What actually works?
The problem is not the data. It is the decision.
Stefan opened with a challenge many in the room recognized immediately. You have access to more information than ever before, but that rarely makes the decision easier. Brand trackers tell you what is happening, but not why. Research cycles take weeks when you need answers in days. And by the time you have confirmation, the moment has often passed.
That is exactly the gap Haystack Consulting helps close.
AI that simulates how real people think.
A central part of Stefan’s session was a live look at Virtual Audiences, Haystack’s AI-powered approach to understanding consumer behaviour. These are not simple chatbot responses. They are synthetic personas built from real behavioural patterns, cultural context and category-specific knowledge. Each persona can explain its motivations, reason through trade-offs and even react to a packaging visual or campaign concept.
The result: research that used to take six to eight weeks can now be done in days. Not by skipping the depth, but by working smarter.
Real examples from the session included a drinks brand that needed insights across more than ten markets, and a retail client who tested campaign concepts in a fraction of the usual time without losing quality. The outcomes matched what traditional research had found, but faster and at a fraction of the cost.
The human part still matters most.
Stefan was clear on one thing. AI speeds up the process, but it does not replace the thinking. Virtual Audiences simulate reasoning, they do not replace human emotional nuance, creative instinct or strategic judgment. The value comes from the combination: AI brings speed and scale, human expertise brings context and direction.
His closing thought stuck with many in the room: the best marketers are not the ones who are sure they are right. They are the ones who find out faster when they are not.
Want to know what this could mean for your brand decisions?
Get in touch with Haystack Consulting and we will show you how this works in practice.
Reach out to our expert on the matter
