Ron Sellers of Grey Matter continues to fight the good fight for data accuracy and reliability. His most recent article for GreenBook is especially worth reading, because it’s not just a litany of complaints, but gives readers specific advice on how to weed out suspect data and obtain quality that's validated and accurately represents consumer reality.

“This takes a lot more than digital fingerprinting or pre-programmed algorithms,” Seller writes. “Usually, it requires going line-by-line through the data to find and remove problem respondents.” Without that attention to detail, he warns, “frankly, they just miss a lot.”

We don’t think anyone will go wrong by taking Ron Sellers’ constructive criticism and sensible advice to heart. To read his article, click here.

And for a productive conversation about how mobile-app research meets the quality challenge to fulfill your projects' specific needs, just click here.

It’s conventional wisdom among insights professionals that it’s becoming increasingly hard to recruit people to take consumer surveys. But it ain’t necessarily so.

This dynamic changes when consumers think they’ll get a fair cash reward and a good experience when they participate in market research. The answer is to meet them where they’re most comfortable – on their smartphones.

So far this year, the Surveys On The Go® market research app has ranked in the Top 125 97.2% of the time among U.S. Android users who download the app at Google Play. 78% of the time it has been in the Top 100.

At Apple’s App Store, SOTG’s iOS version has been in the Top 125 99.3% of the time since July 1. And for 51 consecutive days, as of Nov. 20, it has held a spot in the Top 100 iOS Lifestyle apps, currently ranking 51^st. The download figures are from the app analytics company, App Annie.

Driving these numbers is the quality of the survey-taking experience enjoyed by more than 1.3 million active Surveys On The Go® panel members. The app consistently earns user ratings of 4.5 stars out of 5 in unsolicited public feedback posted at the two app stores, based on more than 62,000 ratings to date. These ratings, and word-of-mouth recommendations among friends and acquaintances, are the keys to the panel’s growth. SOTG naturally attracts more than 2,000 new members a day without any advertising or other recruitment outreach.

The takeaway is that today’s consumers really do want to take surveys, if they’re properly engaged in the mobile space where they’ve chosen to live. For a productive conversation about how mobile-app research can handle your sample requirements and provide solutions for your projects' specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

Only Quality Ads Will Break Through on Social. Here's How.

A Marketing Man from Mars Shares Sweet, Data-First Insights

Brand Authenticity: Why Keeping it Real Keeps Brands Healthy

And here's a Friday video that's in tune with the Thanksgiving spirit.

Here’s a bit of advice about consumer insights that’s short and sweet – and so fundamentally important that it needs to be constantly reiterated. It comes from Andrew Clarke, Chief Marketing & Customer Officer of Mars, the iconic candy company that produces M&Ms, Milky Way bars and much more.

The UK marketing periodical, Campaign, reported on a recent talk Clarke gave in England, where Mars is headquartered. Here's the key quote:

“`Marketers should trust data,’ Clarke said. `It's very easy to make bad decisions in today's world. It's much easier to make brave decisions if you have the right information. But it's very stupid to make brave decisions without data.’"

There’s been a drumbeat of coverage in business publications about how the role of a Chief Marketing Officer is changing, and how pressured and insecure the position has become. Clarke addressed this uncertainty head-on, noting a study in which – yikes! – 80% of CEOs surveyed said they were not impressed by their CMOS.

Instead of playing defense, Clarke urged marketers to embrace imaginative thinking and innovation, because imagination and innovation are what marketing should be about.

“I think being a Chief Marketing Officer is brave….We’re the ones trying to take the future forward, and that future is tricky,” Clarke said.

It’s a fundamental truth that one of the most important keys to moving brands forward is trustworthy data on which their executives can base decisions. But it’s crucial to realize that as the world and its people change, achieving the fundamentals requires innovative and imaginative tactical adjustments that get ahead of, or at least keep up with, the pace of change. That’s what we think Clarke means when he defines marketing as a brave attempt to “take the future forward.”

If only 20% of CMOs are currently valued by their bosses, it’s time to disrupt the status quo. That’s not going to happen if marketers and market researchers fail to take a close look at their customary data streams. They should consider a methodical examination of whether the data they’re getting and the recommendations they’re making to those skeptical CEOs are truly representative of today’s consumers.

At the top of the list of innovative tools for obtaining consumer insights are mobile-app surveys and passive-data collected from a panel of consumer research app users. It’s not just the innovative technology that matters, but the way in which tech-focused, app-centric consumers will gravitate to an engaging survey app that lets them easily share opinions via the smartphones that are at the center of their comfort zones for information and communication. For a productive conversation about how mobile app research works, and how it can meet your specific project needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

There's a strong current of opinion in the world of digital advertising that says it's increasingly disliked by consumers and possibly on the way out.  An article along those lines appeared in a recent edition of Chief Content Officer magazine, under the headline “How Advertising Is Killing the World Wide Web.” 

Writer Kirk Cheyfitz painted the situation surrounding digital advertising in shades of black:  “A plague of bots has brands paying to have their ads clicked by non-humans. Wildly varying `view-ability’ standards allow few ads humans can view, while other ads make it impossible to see anything but the ad....Bad ads, maddening interruptions, mindless product claims and general abuse of customers online – have come home to roost.” Citing eMarketer, Cheyfitz reports that 75 million U.S. consumers are using ad blockers, and that blocker use continues to grow by double digit percentages each year.

If there's a way out, the article suggests, it's placing all bets on quality. Offer  consumers a quality experience, starting with respecting their right not to have their activities on social media and websites intruded upon by ads that block content and won't go away.

Now that quality assurance in the social media advertising realm is so badly needed, agencies and brands need tools and processes to achieve it. One that deserves a close look is Social Ad Testing, which lets advertisers assess how consumers perceive mobile social media ads before a campaign has been launched.

– First identify members of a mobile research panel who fit the ad's targeted profile.

– Next, inject the ad you're testing into these consumers' actual personal news feeds. 

– The result is a real-life, in-the-moment test, rather than a simulation, because the ad appears in the same environment as the content that brings people to social media in the first place. Can the ad do its job in the tough social environment, where it competes for attention with posts from the recipient's friends, families and trusted content-sharers?

– The answers come from first gathering passive behavioral data showing how recipients interact with the test ad --do they show engagement by  clicking on, sharing, liking the ad, or enabling a  video ad's audio track?

– Then the same recipients receive a survey that provides deeper insights into whether they noticed the ad and its brand or product. Shown the the ad again in their news feed, they'll answer questions that shed insights into what grabbed them, or what's boring or irritating them. 

– The advertiser can proceed confidently if the test signals are good, or, if they're not so good, make the needed adjustment to the concept and content and then retest to see if the problems have been solved.

If quality is the ultimate battleground on which digital advertising must make its stand, Social Ad Testing is a good ally to bring to the fight. For a productive conversation about how Social Ad Testing and other mobile research solutions can meet your projects’ specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

Three themes jump out of the New York Times' consumer guide to the 2017 holiday season’s top video games and gaming devices: mobility, versatility and authenticity.

The Times praises the Nintendo Switch – a gaming console that’s been flying off the shelves since its introduction months ago – as the year’s hottest device. One of the key selling points is its versatility. Switch is an at-home console that can be removed from its dock and double as a mobile device for on-the-go play.

And “Call of Duty: World War II” is being pegged as one of the season’s hottest games, with an emphasis on authenticity as a selling point. The game puts players in the shoes of a U.S. Army infantryman fighting his way through the European theater, and the Times notes that its designers engaged an expert historian to help them get the details of weaponry and combat settings just right.

While the smartphone’s impact on consumers is relatively new (this is the 11th holiday season in which gift-givers can buy their dear ones an iPhone), the need for brands and products to provide quality mobile experiences is no longer news, but a given. On the other hand, authenticity as a key selling point isn’t new at all: many a Baby Boomer probably still can hum the nearly 50-year-old jingle that celebrates Coca-Cola as "the real thing."

Experts who parse today's generational attitudes have identified a craving for authenticity as perhaps even more of a hallmark for Millennials and Gen Z, who together will dominate the consumer economy for decades to come. We're in an age of social media, when any hint of dissatisfaction with a brand’s messaging can instantly go viral. Consumers who perceive a message as inauthentic have the power and platform to stir up some hurricane-force blowback.

For marketers, the challenges in a world of mobile consumers who insist on versatility and authenticity are both technical and creative. The technical imperative in connecting with consumers via their smartphones is to ensure that every interaction provides a seamless, enjoyably functional affirmation of their emotional and practical investments in their devices. The creative imperative is to achieve marketing impressions that reward consumers' desire to connect with content that has the imprimatur of authenticity. A valuable bookend to authenticity in branding is to use a satiric brush to paint competing consumer options as silly and inauthentic, as in Direct TV's commercials mocking cable.

For insights professionals, meeting the technical challenges of studying mobile consumers comes down to partnering with mobile research providers who have put the most time, thought, energy and commitment to quality into designing mobile capabilities and solutions. For marketers, achieving authenticity (or gaining an entertaining advantage by poking fun at inauthenticity) requires purposeful and timely pre-launch testing of a campaign’s creative content, especially on social media. For a productive conversation about how to succeed on both the technical and the creative fronts as you address your projects’ specific needs, just get in touch by clicking here.

The name of this week’s ARF West conference at Google’s HQ in Sunnyvale, CA is “FORECASTxSCIENCE,” and one of its key emphases is to “examine whether surveys are still a credible tool for guiding business decisions.” Another major area of exploration is whether and how Big Data can combine with traditional surveys to predict marketing outcomes. The theme on Tuesday, Nov. 14 is “Survey Accuracy and Beyond Surveys,” followed on Wednesday by “Beyond Surveys & AI.”

Three of MFour’s leaders and experts  will be attending, and if you’re going you’ll find them ready and eager to join in the discussion that flows from the presentations. As leading experts on mobile-app research, Director of Sales Alex Colao, Research Manager Alex Leipf, and Vice President of Operations Vardan Kirakosyan can give you a fresh perspective. They can fill you in on how in-app mobile research capabilities, methodology and panel recruitment represent a categorically different approach, rather than an incremental tweak of familiar online research techniques.

For example, mobile-app panelists’ phones provide constant streams of data that show where they go, which apps they use, and how they engage with ads served to their phones. That includes social media ads, which can be tested in the ideal environment by injecting the test ad into the actual personal news feeds of panelists who mirror the campaign’s target audience. For post-launch ad metrics, passively collected mobile data identifies panelists who’ve actually received an ad on their phones. Their detailed profiles can tell advertisers whether they’re reaching the right audience, and they can follow up by surveying validated ad recipients to measure lift in brand and product awareness, along with other measures of an ad’s effectiveness.

The MFour contingent is ready to talk about specific solutions as well as overall capabilities and methodology. Look for the guys wearing the green lanyards with the MFour logo, then feel free to pepper them with detailed questions about how mobile-app research can address your projects’ specific needs. Of course, the invitation extends to everyone in the insights industry, whether attending or not. To set up a productive conversation about what you need to achieve and how in-app mobile can accomplish it, just click here.

Here's your Friday roundup of 3 items from the MFour blog to keep you up to speed on mobile. Just click and read!

See How Puma Pounced on an Emotional-Marketing Opportunity

Here's How Brands Can Test Social Media Ads for Emotional Impact

How To Make Sure Your Social Media Ads Can Connect

And here's a Friday tune to send you humming into your weekend.

(L-R) Nicole Phan, Carl Nielson, Ayelet Germanski 

MFour has added three new team members who will help develop innovative new mobile research products, guide consumer researchers to the best solutions for their needs, and ensure that clients don’t just succeed, but enjoy the experience.

Ayelet Germanski, Senior Project Manager for solutions engineering, will guide the complex process of developing and creating new research technology that expands what MFour clients can accomplish by tracking and surveying mobile consumers. She brings strong interpersonal and communications skills to the job, informed by studies and early career experience as a psychotherapist. Since branching into the tech sector six years ago, Ayelet has led projects for startups, most recently at Tungsten Revenue Consultants, a management consulting company based in Canada. Ayelet  holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University.

Carl Nielson, Senior Solutions Executive, is one of the world’s leading experts in helping consumer insights professionals harness and tailor mobile research’s special methods and capabilities to meet their specific needs. He’ll be based in Charleston, S.C., positioned to provide increased  guidance on mobile-app research to East Coast clients. Carl previously was Director of Mobile Research for SessionM and Instantly. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Managerial Economics from Hampden-Sydney College; his interests outside work include travel, basketball and philanthropic support for a church and a farming family in Matanzas, Cuba.

Nicole Phan’s job as User Experience Designer makes her one of MFour clients’ behind-the-scenes best friends. She’s ensuring that MFour’s products don’t just accomplish what they’re designed for, but that using them will be a seamless, enjoyable experience. Nicole has extensive training in the often-neglected art of making sure that technology is user friendly, including earning two Bachelor’s degrees from the University of California, San Diego – one in Cognitive Science, with a specialization in Human-Computer Interaction, the other in Computing in the Arts and Music. Past positions include working on patient care systems at Mirth, and financial solutions at Intuit. Nicole is a gamer, photographer, loves the outdoors, and is a certified yoga teacher.

Welcome aboard, Ayelet, Carl and Nicole!

Here’s an interesting take on how brands are finding new ways to put their best foot forward by making more intense and authentic emotional connections with consumers. 

It’s a chat about footwear marketing posted at Forbes.com, with Billee Howard of consultancy Brandthropologie interviewing Adam Petrick, Global Director of Brand and Marketing for the sports shoe company, Puma. The subject is how Puma leveraged celebrity marketing and philanthropy to make an emotional connection with consumers for whom celebrity and responding to social needs both carry emotional weight. Having already partnered with pop star Rihanna for her own signature shoes, Puma added a special new one, with proceeds going to Rihanna's charitable foundation. The brand's aim was to be seen not just as a seller of consumer goods, but as a culturally relevant doer of good deeds.

Here are a few quotes from the conversation, highlighting some of the thinking behind Puma's latest effort in emotional connections marketing: 

– "The idea of ‘storydoing’ vs. 'storytelling' has emerged….to fuse the increasing need for brands to have a grander sense of purpose beyond the bottom-line with the growing appetite from consumers to be emotionally engaged through authentic stories and experiences that matter.”

– “We are in an experience economy,…[which increases] the need to focus less on the WHAT…and more on the WHO and the WHY behind it to create emotional experiences that are purposeful.”

– “Not  interesting to us would have been writing a giant check to Rihanna and asking her to be the face of an ad campaign. By being interesting and doing interesting things, we get to take interesting actions that impact our consumers, our culture and also, of course, our business.”

– “Rational engagement could be about selling people a product based on a technology or a specific benefit that makes sense from a price standpoint. But I think that emotional connection is now very, very important because when you choose to wear a brand… where the differentiation between the brands is sometimes hard to see, that choice is driven by an emotional connection.”

– “You're either familiar with the brand and you understand what it stands for, or you don't. And if you aren't connecting with a brand, then you're not going to choose that brand. So, it’s extremely important to have emotional depth or meaning in order to be in the top consideration set of your target consumers.”

– “To do this effectively and authentically, we have to listen more, and we have to pay close attention to what's going on in the culture to deliver products that connect, resonate and matter.”

And here are some further observations about how to obtain consumer insights that can effectively inform brands' decision-making as they plan their emotional-connections marketing:

– The best way to understand consumers’ emotions is to see and hear them at the moment when they're having an emotional experience, or immediately after, while the experience is still vivid.

– Capturing consumers’ in-the-moment emotional responses in real time is a special capability of advanced mobile research, which uniquely can follow and reach respondents wherever they carry their smartphones.

– A particularly vivid way to get to consumers’ emotions is to ask them to turn their phones’ cameras on themselves for an in-their-own-words “video selfie." This is how you can see and hear their actual feelings -- and then incorporate the videos when you present your findings to decision-makers.

For a productive conversation on how mobile-app research can bring you face-to-face with a pop icon’s fans, or with people who’ve just entered or exited a footwear store, or whoever else you’d like to connect with at the Point-of-Emotion®, just click here.