The persona in your research has never used your product.

It has read every review ever written about it. It has never opened the package, never been let down by it, never stood in an aisle deciding whether to buy it again.

For a while I didn't think that mattered much.

Then I thought about what actually happens in a focus group. Put eight people in a room and ask what they think of something. The praise is polite, vague, and over in about a minute. The complaints are specific, detailed, sometimes unreasonable, and they go on for as long as you let them. Somebody will tell you the packaging has been annoying them for two years.

That's the most valuable twenty minutes you'll buy all quarter.

Now think about walking offstage after a talk. Somebody says good job. You say thanks and keep walking. You don't turn around and ask them good job about what.

Now imagine they say it could have been better. You stop. You want to know exactly what they meant, which part, what you should have done instead.

Praise gets accepted. Criticism gets interrogated.

So the specificity was never sitting inside the feedback. It's in the follow-up question.

There's nothing behind an AI's answer, because it has no real experience to draw on. Ask it why and it will give you a reason. It just won't be remembering anything.