Simulated Personas: Digital Twins for Smarter Brand Design
In the world of branding, empathy is everything.
To design with intent, you have to understand your audience—not just by data points, but by mindset, emotion, and instinct.
At psyborg®, we’ve been exploring how AI-powered simulated personas—what we like to think of as digital twins of audience insight—can sharpen our creative decisions and build stronger brands.
What Are Simulated Personas?
Simulated personas are fictional characters generated with AI to represent a specific segment of your target market. They’re built on logic, psychology, and context—not guesswork.
They’re not real people, but they think like real people.
Using tools like ChatGPT, we can model these personas to:
- React to logo designs
- Judge a tagline’s tone
- Evaluate trust in a landing page
- Compare a new brand to others they’ve seen
Each simulation becomes a mirror. A voice. A perspective.
Not Quite a Digital Twin… or Is It?
Technically, a digital twin is a real-time, data-driven replica of a system or person. While simulated personas aren’t fed live analytics, they replicate the behaviour, preferences and emotional state of a given audience slice.
That makes them a form of cognitive digital twin—not tracking real users, but thinking like them.
And that’s where the value lies.
How We Use It at psyborg®
We use simulated personas in three key phases:
1. Brand Testing
Before locking in a brand, logo or tagline, we simulate multiple personas—parents, teenagers, business owners, sceptical buyers—and ask them for blunt feedback.
2. Tone of Voice Development
We trial copy through different lenses. Does this tone sound condescending to a teenager? Is it too casual for a corporate buyer?
3. Concept Validation
We test early concepts with personas who challenge the idea. If they buy in, we know we’re onto something.
Why It Works
This approach gives us:
✔️ Fast, diverse insights
✔️ Cost-effective feedback before rollout
✔️ Clarity when we’re too close to the work
It also helps clients see their brand through other eyes—which is often the breakthrough moment.
Designing for Minds, Not Just Markets
Simulated personas don’t replace real-world testing. But they accelerate understanding. They open up empathy. They give voice to the audience before the campaign lands.
And in our book, that’s designing with intelligence.
Part mind. Part machine.
Daniel Borg
Creative Director
psyborg® was founded by Daniel Borg, an Honours Graduate in Design from the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Daniel also has an Associate Diploma in Industrial Engineering and has experience from within the Engineering & Advertising Industries.
Daniel has completed over 2800 design projects consisting of branding, content marketing, digital marketing, illustration, web design, and printed projects since psyborg® was first founded. psyborg® is located in Lake Macquarie, Newcastle but services business Nation wide.
I really do enjoy getting feedback so please let me know your thoughts on this or any of my articles in the comments field or on social media below.
Cheers Daniel