• by Larry Dobrow , May 15, 2003

When asked about his magazine's recently launched advertising campaign, Reader's Digest executive publisher Dom Rossi sounds as much like a guy trying to stimulate industry-wide discourse as one trying to give his own publication a boost.

The campaign - the title's first in a decade - is aimed exclusively at decision makers in the media business, with ads scheduled to run through the end of June in several ad trades. Rossi's prime targets: media planners and top-level account directors.

"I want this campaign to raise their consciousness about the superior level of audience connection that Reader's Digest affords them, but I also want it to stress that audience involvement should be an important factor in every single advertising decision they make," he says. "Magazines have become their own worst enemy. We've allowed ourselves to be commoditized. Right now, the lowest CPM gets the business, and quality of audience is not a part of the equation. That's a prescription for failure."

Of course, with 40 million readers in the U.S., Rossi and Reader's Digest can afford to spend a few minutes gazing dreamily at the big picture. That the mag is using its leadership position to attempt to effect meaningful change within the advertising food chain, well, that's the unusual part. "I consider this a contemporary trade campaign that has a very important and relevant goal," Rossi says.

Several years ago, Reader's Digest was one of the publications in a consortium that developed the Involvement Index, a metric designed to evaluate the quality of a publication's readership. The Index emphasizes measurements such as average reading time and percentage of readers who read a mag's last four issues. It has slowly caught on among media planners and buyers in particular, and has been warmly received by several top-tier magazine behemoths (National Geographic, Hearst, Smithsonian, Disney).

Rossi seems considerably more eager to discuss the Index than the marketing challenges facing Reader's Digest ("things are great. You don't need me to tell you that."). He says that the ad campaign "takes us full circle. [The magazine is] getting recognition for what we're doing with audience involvement, but we want to put it in writing, if you will."

It's not lost on him, of course, that Reader's Digest scores high marks in reader involvement: "To advertisers, what we're saying is that our readers are more involved than readers of just about any other publication, or even TV shows or web sites. If I'm an advertiser, that's the kind of thing I want to know when I'm making my decisions."

In keeping with the campaign's "get involved" tagline, Reader's Digest is asking members of the media community to contribute copy for future ads. The opportunity, which will be extended via AdAge.com, Adweek.com and mailings, asks media mavens to complete the phrase "If we got any closer to our readers...". Contributors whose submissions are used will be rewarded with a weekend at a luxury hotel.

The "get involved" campaign was created by Needleman, Drussman & Partners.