Still more on reader involvement

'None of these qualitative measures are without their biases. As soon as you make an argument for one you could find a very realistic case where it is an unfair assessment of another magazine.'

Still more on
reader involvement

Print folks debate the practicality of an index

By Jeff Bercovici

    Quality circulation is like stronger family values and saying no to drugs: Everybody claims to agree on the need for it, but nobody can agree on how to accomplish it.
    One idea that's currently making the rounds is for agencies to adopt a semi-standardized "Involvement Index," which would use existing MRI data to reflect the strength of the connection that exists between the magazine and its readers.
    It would look at factors such as how much time readers spend with the magazine, how regularly they read it, and whether they consider it one of their favorites.
    The Involvement Index is being advanced by two Reader’s Digest Association executives, Britta Ware, U.S. director of research, and Eric Gruseke, publisher.
    The idea behind such an index is neither new nor revolutionary, and on the face of it, seems perfectly commonsensical.
    Nonetheless, media people are divided over how such an index ought to function, and indeed over whether there is a need for one in the first place.
    Just how divided Media Life learned over the past two days from readers reacting to our two-part series "Better way to gauge reader involvement."
    The magazine received a substantial response.
    Among the arguments in favor of the Involvement Index is that planners give too little thought to the question of reader involvement, relegating it to a tertiary role in their decision making.
    They would be more likely to factor involvement into their decisions if they had a method of doing so that was convenient and somewhat standardized, or so the reasoning goes.
    Not true, says Sharon Cooper, associate planning director at Carat USA in Santa Monica, Calif. Planners who want to consider involvement are already perfectly capable of doing so without the need for some kind of formal index, she says.
    "Audience involvement has never had a ‘tertiary role’ in the plans I've built over the past 15 years," says Cooper.
    But others disagree.
    Barbara Zack, senior vice president and director of communication insights at Creative Media in New York, said she believes planners more often than not consider reader involvement only as a tiebreaking factor, if at all.
    "There's nobody I'm aware of who always looks to qualitative factors," says Zack. "It ends up meaning more work, which is why people don't do it. In an ideal world, if we had a better involvement measure I think more people would use it as a primary decision factor."
    "It’s a tool that can and probably should be used more often than it is," agrees Jamie Rhind, media director at Avrett Free & Ginsberg. "A lot of people don’t even know that information exists."
    But it is a tool with a number of built-in flaws, and those who use it must be aware of them, notes Rhind.
    For instance, the Involvement Index's reliance on loyalty (e.g., how readers answer the question "How many of the last four issues of this magazine did you read?") means that it will favor magazines that are subscription- rather than newsstand-driven.
    Rhind suggests that more emphasis should be given to the question of preference (i.e., how readers respond to the question "Is this one of your favorite magazines?").
    "That will show that certain types of magazines are superior editorially," he says. "Readers just care more about them."
    But even that would end up unfairly favoring some magazines over others, as would pretty much any measure of "involvement" you could think of, says Creative Media's Zack.
    "None of these qualitative measures are without their biases," she says. "As soon as you make an argument for one you could find a very realistic case where it is an unfair assessment of another magazine.
    "The difficult answer is that there are different qualitative measures which are more or less appropriate for different brands in specific situations given specific objectives."
    That won’t work, says Bill Bock, media supervisor at DCA.
    All that mathematical jiggery-pokery, though perhaps necessary, would defeat the purpose of having an Involvement Index in the first place, that being to bring a measure of objectivity to what is now, for most planners, a subjective part of the decision, says Bock.
    "It’s taking a number that’s of questionable statistical value to begin with and making it mean even less."

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.

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