Scientific American

“ Scientific American , the country’s longest continuously published magazine, has a cherished heritage but at the same time every edition must be all new and appealing for today’s readers. As a publication that covers science, also, we appreciate the value of learning about the marketplace by using real evidence from real customers. During a recent redesign of Scientific American that was launched in the October 2010 issue, Affinnova’s unique system helped us to understand the cover elements—design, placement and cover lines—that would be most engaging for our customers.”
- Mariette DiChristina
Editor-in-Chief
Scientific American

Headquarters: New York, New York. USA
Target Market: USA
Optimization and Measurement: Product Redesign
www.scientificamerican.com

Using Science to Redesign the Scientific American Cover

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The publishers of Scientific American were contemplating an update to the cover design, to go along with a refreshed editorial composition. The company was interested in identifying the cover layout and feature stories that would be most likely to attract new readers.

CHALLENGE

Scientific American has been serving science enthusiasts since 1845, and in 2010, they launched an effort to redesign the magazine and attract new readers. The company needed to optimize the layout of the cover and the content for the issue that signaled this relaunch. The editorial and design team wanted to understand the importance and interaction of different content elements, including feature content, text size, overall layout, cover image, and headline language. Traditional market research methods would restrict the number of concepts they could test when exploring the appeal of different combinations of these elements on a magazine cover.

SOLUTION

Affinnova’s evolutionary optimization technology, IDDEA, eliminated the restrictions of conventional market research and enabled Scientific American to test a potential space of almost 2 million combinations of cover content and layout options directly with consumers to identify the highest performing top concepts. IDDEA II measurement then evaluated the top concepts in terms of purchase intent, reading interest, and other key measures. Measurement scores were compared among top concepts and against competitors to determine the concepts with the greatest market potential.

SUCCESS

Through the vetting process, three unique top concepts emerged. All three concepts had the same overall layout, but were differentiated primarily by the cover image. The actual headline of the cover was second in driving consumer choice, behind image. These concepts were significantly more appealing and eye-catching to the existing loyal reader base and new readers. The measurement phase showed that, once in market, two of the top concepts were likely to outperform recent issues on similar topics, as well other competitive publications.

Read more at Media Bistro.