Highlight launches Pulse: instant product insights, powered by Highlight Twins

CPG teams can now take the Pulse of their audience in seconds, not survey cycles, with Twins modeled on real people who test real products at home.

NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Highlight today launched Pulse during a live webinar with brand and innovation consultant Gina Won, who tested Highlight Twins against real consumer responses as a beta partner.

Pulse is the fastest way for CPG teams to get a read on their consumers — thousands of vetted testers, instantly available as Highlight Twins. Teams simply define an audience, start a discussion, and get feedback on anything from an early idea to a finished concept, with responses back in seconds.

Highlight Twins are built on the company's biggest asset, its community of product testers, known as Highlighters. Each Twin is modeled on one Highlighter and grounded in thousands of real-world observations from that person's time in the community, from surveys and concept tests to in-home product testing. Together, the Twins draw on a first-of-its-kind dataset built from years of hands-on experience with real products.

"Every CPG team is looking to get more data-driven, and more customer-centric, but human research takes time and some critical moments need insight on impossible timelines," said Dana Kim, co-founder and CEO of Highlight. "We've spent years building a community of real people testing real products in their own homes. We've become experts in what consumers like, care about, and will buy. Highlight Twins let us bring more of those voices into product decisions, faster, before a team makes its first prototype or spends a single dollar."

That foundation lets Pulse preserve what many approaches lose: individual voices. "Most AI consumer-simulation approaches fine-tune a model on a pool of consumer data. The differences between their respondents are generated by the model, not rooted in real people, so answers drift toward the middle," said Ian Civgin, VP of Product at Highlight. "Ask that kind of model about a ghost-pepper chip — you'll mostly hear it's a little too spicy. Ask real people, and you'll find a group that won't touch it and a group that will buy it by the case. That second group is where breakout brands come from."

Each Highlight Twin is rooted in one Highlighter's hands-on history with real products, so Pulse can find that group instead of guessing. And unlike other AI twin products built for every industry, Highlight Twins are built for CPG, drawing on years of in-home product testing, not just surveys. As Highlighters keep testing, every new test makes Twin responses more accurate.

"I have been using Highlight for traditional product and concept testing for years. So I was excited to test Highlight Twins side by side with actual in-depth interviews. What stood out to me is that Twins didn't give a response that reflected the average opinion — it provided the range of consumer reactions, just like real research," said Gina Won, founder of The Yes Perspective. "I can see how Twins would be immensely valuable as the voice of your consumer throughout several stages of the product development process."

No matter how early the idea, teams can test it. Pulse gives them an instant layer of insight when they need it most. Instead of waiting days on a survey, they can get a read in seconds, even in the middle of a live brainstorm.

Pulse is available today. To see it in action, book a demo at letshighlight.com/pulse

About Highlight

The Highlight Product Research Platform enables brands to create products people love. Powered by a proprietary community, seamless logistics, research expertise, and AI-driven analytics, Highlight's platform is context rich, steeped in expertise, and purpose-built for modern teams and trusted by leading brands, top retailers, and emerging innovators alike. The Highlight product research platform embeds expertise and AI power so modern teams can test physical products anytime, anywhere, quickly delivering continuous insights at scale.

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SOURCE Highlight