One thing C+R is best known for is our KidzEyes panel, which fuels our YouthBeat syndicated study. KidzEyes is unique in the kid research industry because we contact individual children directly through their own email (notifying parents), and we contact their parents separately. Most online kid research is done at a "household" level, meaning that parents are contacted, they open a link and have their children take a survey. By contacting the both the child and parent directly, we can ensure that their answers are candid and unbiased--separately.

I've spent a career investigating and dissecting what youth audiences want. While they gravitate toward the timely and contemporary, they still find great comfort in the timeless and true. It's the blend that makes for blockbusters, along with a good dose of what I term marketable artistry.

At the Kid, Youth and Parent Power Conference in Florida last week, marketers, researchers and child advocates gathered to discuss trends and to share success stories. But they also came to engage in one of researchers' and marketers' favorite pastimes: myth bashing. On the doorstep of Disney, a place where fairy tales usually prevail, speakers challenged the notion that teens rebel (according to MTV, Millennials prefer to game the system, not change it), that tweens and teens respond to mobile advertising, and that today's parents just don't understand (it turns out, they do).