Before there was engagement, there was Involvement . . . and Reader’s Digest drove the conversation. America’s largest paid magazine had two strikes against it: an aging audience and disdain from young urban media planners. We couldn’t make them fans, but we could get them to value RD’s intense reader loyalty…by mining the intersection between Digest attributes and industry values. So we stumped for audience involvement rather than reach as the basis for measuring media, and then introduced an Involvement Index that made quality simple (incorporating subtler data points into one number on a flow chart). Information standard-bearer MRI agreed to incorporate the index into its media planning software, allowing agencies to formulate their own versions for everyday use. Eight other magazine companies joined The Digest in a coalition promoting the index through events and media, while each of the largest media agencies contracted with MRI and incorporated signature versions of the benchmark into magazine planning. Beyond putting the magazine continually in the headlines, the campaign moved the market in the Digest’s direction.