Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from MFour to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you head into your weekend.

• 6 Ways Advanced Mobile Can Drive Success
• The New Year's Resolution You've Got to Make
• Steve Jobs' Gift to Market Research

And here's a Friday tune to get you ready to strut your stuff.

“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign” was the hook for a big pop hit back in 1971.

Nobody back then imagined that automobile license plates could be turned into signage. It’s now a reality, rolled out this week at the Detroit Auto Show. Called the rPlate, it’s a digital version of the traditional metal license plate. While a vehicle is on the road it displays only the regular license number. But once a car bearing an rPlate is parked, passersby will see a commercial message.

Reviver, the rPlate’s creator, says the plates will debut this year in California and Florida, where legislators already have approved them. We’ll leave it to you to imagine what kinds of ads might begin to crop up in those states’ parking lots, driveways, and curbsides. One thing is certain: where there’s messaging, there’s a need to test the message to measure its effectiveness. With MFourDIY™ you’ll get true-mobile DIY solutions for the full gamut of ad testing and ad measurement needs:

• TV and radio commercials
• Mobile ads
• Print advertising
• Movie trailers
• Billboards, transit ads and other out-of-home signage
• And, soon enough, license plates.

Please click here for full details on MFourDIY™ -- or contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

January takes its name from the Roman god Janus, who had two faces, one looking backward to the year just past, and one forward to the year ahead. Janus was the god of time, change, and transitions – reminding believers that it’s reckless to move forward without a firm grounding in the insights we’ve gained from past experience.

You don’t have to be a historian to appreciate the wisdom the Romans attributed to Janus. If you’re a market research professional, you can’t afford to do without it.

With a new year bringing new goals for collecting data and insights in the months ahead -- and new budget allocations with which to achieve them – it’s important to look backward to assess your confidence in the data and data-collection methods you used in the year just past.

That’s especially true for tracking studies, which depend on maintaining accuracy and consistency between the data you obtained last year and the data you’ll obtain in 2017. Are you confident that the panels you used in 2016 accurately reflected the consumer demographics you needed? Did your methodology let you reach the right consumers at the right time, with survey methods that kept respondents focused and honestly engaged? And did your data cohere with observed market realities?

 If the answers are not a hearty, resounding “yes,” then it’s probably time to take a cue from Janus. If what you see looking backward makes you uneasy, then an important lesson for January in 2017 is that a reflexive repetition of the past will keep you from making the changes you need to open up a better future.

Online survey data is a feature of market researchers’ past that is becoming unreliable in the present and future. Online methods are no longer in sync with how consumers live today – with smartphones in hand and mobile-apps as their favorite way to use them.

We invite you to click here to see how you can change gradually and prudently as you integrate insights from a true-mobile panel with the portions of your online tracking data that remain worth preserving. A quick and cost-effective way to introduce yourself to true-mobile’s research capabilities is with MFourDIY™ – the only all-mobile do-it-yourself research tool.

For full details, contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

Ten years ago this week, Steve Jobs announced the imminent debut of Apple’s first iPhone. A decade later, the average American adult spends more than 10 ½ hours a day looking at electronic screens. It’s estimated that about a third of that time is spent on smartphones. Only TV screens command more of our attention; PCs have fallen into third place. This poses both a challenge and an opportunity for market research in 2017:

• Is it possible to engage consumers long enough to get them to give you some insights into what’s going on behind all those eyes that are glued to screens?

• And is it possible to turn the phones consumers are obsessed with into tools for better research?

The answers are “yes” and “definitely” – but there are two caveats to consider.

Yes, you can get consumers to carve out some minutes in those 10 ½ hours of daily screen time to engage fully in taking your surveys. But the caveat is that you have to choose the right screen – the smartphones that virtually all consumers hold in their hands.

And you definitely can put consumers’ phones to great research use – the caveat being that you’d better make sure you’re using advanced, true-mobile technology to field your surveys. Smartphone users – especially Millennials and the rising Generation Z – love great experiences on their devices, but find few things more unforgivably off-putting than apps that are clunky and slow. In other words, you need to get it right.

So what should you be doing in this milestone year for smartphones? You should be learning how to win with them. And the best way to begin is to leverage the power of MFourDIY™– the nation’s only true-mobile, do-it-yourself survey building platform. So take a moment to immerse yourself in the DIY experience by clicking here.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

Responding to rapidly growing demand for its true-mobile research solutions, MFour has added two experienced market research professionals to its Operations team.

Celeste Blanchard and Holly Wong arrive with more than a decade of experience as consultants and staff research experts at major companies. At MFour they will be hands-on contributors to the process of programming, fielding, and data reporting for clients’ research projects.

Celeste arrives from Scientific Telephone Samples, where she oversaw all aspects of research projects from start to finish. She is a former Operations Manager for Home Depot, specializing in data analysis and metrics for productivity and profit & loss. She is a graduate of Florida Metropolitan University in Tampa, and a military veteran who served as a Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy. Celeste is an avid reader and a sci fi buff who’s particularly immersed in “Star Trek” and “Dr. Who.”

As a freelance consultant, Holly handled all aspects of designing and implementing quantitative and qualitative research projects for a wide range of clients in many industries. Her projects included consulting on the launch of new menu items for the Del Taco restaurant chain. Previously she was a Senior Research Manager for Lieberman Research Worldwide. Holly holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physiological Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. She enjoys travel, hiking, and home-brewing beer.

Welcome aboard, Celeste and Holly!

• Meeting 1,000 Millennials
• Be a Do-it-Yourself Research Hero
• Panel Info Like You've Never Seen

Would you like to go down as one of the greatest do-it-yourselfers in the history of survey-based consumer research? In a minute we’ll tell you how. But first a bit of context, from a shortlist of history’s most heroic DIYers in any field:

Art: Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling over the course of four years, adorning it with 343 separate figures. Before getting started he designs the scaffold he’ll use to reach the ceiling.

Music: Stevie Wonder plays all the instruments and sings all the vocal parts on “Living for the City” and “Higher Ground,” two Top 10 hits from his classic 1973 album, “Innervisions.” Prince takes the cue and becomes a noted musical do-it-yourselfer on many of his albums and songs, including the Top 10 hit “Uptown.”

Literature: English author Samuel Johnson labors from 1746 to 1755 to produce what’s considered the first great dictionary of the English language. Working strictly on his own, Johnson writes definitions for 42,773 words and selects 114,000 quotations from published sources to illustrate each word’s meanings.

Military Service: During World War II, Canadian infantryman Leo Major singlehandedly captures 93 German soldiers during the Battle of the Scheldt in Holland. Major tops that feat a few months later when he uses stealth, trickery, and lethal combat skills to singlehandedly capture the Dutch town of Zwolle from the Germans. U.S. Army Lieutenant Audie Murphy accomplishes a comparable exploit during a battle in France, singlehandedly decimating waves of German infantry while calling in coordinates for artillery fire that destroyed a force of German tanks.

Market Research: Now any market research professional can be a do-it-yourself hero – quickly, easily, and with no risk of bodily harm. It’s a matter of using MFourDIY™ – the only true-mobile, do-it-yourself survey-building platform. Consider it your scaffold for creating research masterpieces of your own:

• Easy-to-use yet sophisticated features let you program and field surveys in less than an hour.

• Data begins to arrive immediately from an engaged, all-mobile panel of more than one million active members.

• In many cases it will take less than a day – and sometimes just a few hours – to get all the completes you’ve specified.

• You’ll get cleaned, validated, accurate data that displays automatically in a variety of graphic forms you’ll pick yourself.

• You’ll pull off projects under deadlines that previously would have been impossible, and be hailed as a hero by clients and bosses.

• You don’t have to be that big a hero: MFour has your back with real-time, real-person, in-house representatives who’ll help you whenever you have a question or need a bit of advice.

For details, visit the new MFourDIY™ website by clicking here, where you’ll find detailed, transparently up-front product information of a sort that’s seldom available to researchers shopping for project options. For additional information, please contact Alex at acolao@mfour.com.

MFour’s rapid growth continues in the New Year with the hiring of two new software engineers who’ll join the Labs & Engineering team to drive successful research projects.

Hristo Botev will focus on continued advancements in MFour’s survey platform. Previous positions include Viscomp, Ltd., a Bulgarian web development company where he developed new web services, optimized existing platforms, and mentored colleagues. Hristo holds two degrees from the University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria –  a Master’s in Software Technologies and a Bachelor’s in Engineering Physics.

Michael Dennis will support all facets of developing MFour’s research applications, drawing on his experience in developing consumer-oriented technology and overhauling e-commerce sites, most recently for Wild Attire, Inc., a Southern California online fashion retailer. Besides tech interests that include contributing his free time to open source software projects, Michael enjoys outdoor sports and playing the guitar. His academic background includes studies at Santiago Canyon College and Platt College.

A hearty “Welcome Aboard!” to Hristo and Michael.

Who are Millennials?

A Millennial Insights Project conducted by MFour in 2016 revealed that:

• Most are television bingers: 68% say they binge-watch at least once a month; 52% report doing it once a week.

• Movie theaters aren’t a frequent stop: 43% report having seen a movie during the month before they were surveyed.

• They like banking apps, but not bank branches: They prefer using banking apps (61%) to in-person banking (18%).

• Their smartphone use varies among demographic populations. More than half of African Americans (57%) and Hispanics (52%) say they use their phones at least five hours a day; for Caucasians it’s 39%.

How do we know? We asked. Using MFourDIY™ – the nation’s only true-mobile survey-building tool, we were able to get 1,000 validated and completed responses in less than an hour to 30 questions. Panelists were able to answer quickly and enthusiastically – because they were interacting with the survey via a smartphone app, by far Millennials' favorite conduit for receiving and providing information.

The Millennial Insights Project demonstrates what true-mobile technology can accomplish when combined with an engaged, all-mobile panel. It’s a guide to how you can make 2017 the year you solve your panel problems with faster and more accurate insights from hard-to-reach consumers.

Respondents were ages 18 to 36, and they represented the demographic makeup of U.S. Millennials: 56% Caucasian, 19% Hispanic, 14% African American, 5% Asian and 6% other. Other panel characteristics included 33% were living in a relative’s home and 19% were homeowners.

To learn how you can use MFourDIY™ for your research, click here.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from MFour to keep you up to speed on mobile research as you head into your weekend festivities.

• 7 Mobile Insights for 2017

• When Brick & Mortar Meets Mobile

• Research Worth Bottling 

And here's a Friday tune to get your party going early.