• by John Gaffney , June 4, 2003

Mass marketing to women via magazines used to mean buying the Seven Sisters. Today, it's a mix of the Six Sisters and other mass titles. We're talking career women and moms with more demands on their time than ever before-so who's really getting their attention?

With that in mind, we put a dozen magazines up in head-to-head competition for advertising to the test of the magazine Involvement Index. The Index was created by Reader's Digest and using MRI data, to bring audience quality to the forefront of media planning. The idea was to take qualitative data that was too cumbersome to use on a day-in-day-out basis and meld it into one number that can be added to a spreadsheet-so planners can scan audience quality alongside the staples of reach, composition and cost. An Involvement Alliance (Reader's Digest, Hearst's Country Living, Disney's FamilyFun, Golf Digest, National Geographic, Guideposts and Smithsonian) is sponsoring research to quantify the connection between involvement and advertising effectiveness.

The standard Involvement Index integrates three measures: average reading time, percentage reading four of four issues, and percentage citing the magazine as "one of my favorites." Magazines are then indexed against the universe of MRI-measured titles (203 as of the just-released Spring 2003 study). While some brands could have "all adults" as a target, the Index was designed to measure the involvement of a particular demographic group's connection across titles.. Keep in mind that the Index is a reflection of a magazine's overall connection with its readers. Each title may have a relative strong suit (say, high average reading time) and weak point (like a lower "favorites" rating). The idea is to look at reader involvement as a composite, where magazines are evaluated on more than one criterion.

The chart compares the 12-title competitive set on connection with two targets-women 18-49 and women 25-54 with kids-that typically come up in planning. Rankings are within the competitive set. Keep in mind that the involvement level for all of these magazines is excellent. Also keep in mind that the index is one of many measures, and is intended to be used alongside other selling points such as circulation quality, editorial synergy and newsstand sales.

HEAD TO HEAD
			women 18-49		women 25-54 w/kids
Magazine			Involvement		Involvement
			Index	Rank	Index	Rank
Real Simple			159	1	163	1
O, The Oprah Magazine			144	2	154	3
Reader's Digest			143	3	155	2
Redbook			128	4	129	7
Good Housekeeping			126	5	141	4
Martha Stewart Living			125	6	125	8
People			122	7	109	11
Better Homes & Gardens			121	8	133	5
Ladies' Home Journal			115	9	131	6
Woman's Day			109	10	121	9
Family Circle			104	11	112	10
TV Guide			100	12	101	12
source: New Age Media Systems, Inc. analysis of MRI Spring 2003 Report.