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A bolder, more contemporary Reader's Digest's Selecciones (above and on home page)debuts with the September issue.
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'Reader's Digest's Selecciones' to Debut New Look
August 18, 2008
By Della de Lafuente
NEW YORK Reader's Digest's Selecciones has mounted a redesign, refreshing the look of the oldest Spanish-language consumer magazine in favor of a sleeker, cleaner feel.
Gone is the serif cover logo, replaced by a bolder contemporary design that emphasizes the Spanish name of smaller format magazine Selecciones and relies more heavily on photography and white space to pull in readers who make impulse buying decisions at the newsstand. The September issue goes on sale Tuesday (Aug. 19).
"It's a full top to bottom redesign," said Elaine Alimonti, publisher, Selecciones, in an interview. "We're going for a much more modern look. We're not changing the essential DNA of the content -- our readers love the content -- but everyone has a much more sophisticated design palette these days and the design itself was certainly due for a refresher."
A consumer marketing campaign via direct mail, targeted spot TV in key and emerging markets, and outreach through sponsorships of sizeable Hispanic events, will support.
The launch of the magazine's redesign, which starts with the September issue, comes as Hispanic titles are growing amid a slowdown in newsstand sales.
Selecciones reported a drop in newsstand sales of 16.2 percent for the first half of 2008, with single copy sales totaling 37,837, down from 45,160 for the first six months of 2007, per the Audit Bureau of Circulations' Fas-Fax.
Still, the monthly magazine's total circulation for the first half of 2008, reached 381,138, surpassing a guaranteed circ of 375,000 by 6,138 copies. The Hispanic title was buoyed by a slight 0.8 percent increase in subscriptions during the period while overall circ for newsstand and subscriptions was down 1.2 percent, per Fas-Fax.
"We've had a slight dip in newsstand just as the general market publications have had a double-digit dip in newsstand." Alimonti said. "It's one of the reasons where we think the redesign will be helpful. The new logo and size will pop nicely off of the cover and off the newsstand."
The redesigned September cover features profile images of presumptive presidential candidates John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.), both interviewed by Selecciones' editor Genevieve Fernandez, in a story outlining the candidates' respective positions on issues important to Hispanic voters.
Though it's anticipated that photography will be used more widely across the cover, the positioning of the two candidates, from the left and right sides of the page, was created to signify the electoral race.
"You'll normally see covers with more people, families, women and people who are sort of recognizable and relatable and more white space," Alimonti said. "In our focus group testing, readers said they really wanted to see people's faces on the covers, not necessarily celebrity faces, but faces of people who looked like them."
Editorially, the magazine has beefed up existing departments with new content, including the creation of a photo essay, which will be added in each issue to bring more imagery into the magazine; columnists have been added to the lineup, featuring author and life coach Julio Bevione and chef Daisy Martinez, who offers a healthy take on Latino cuisine, Alimonti said.
A philanthropic component is also being added to the content, which will give readers the opportunity to nominate fellow Hispanics in their communities for making a difference. One deserving individual will be featured in the magazine every month and Selecciones will match the person's charity or philanthropic effort with a charitable donation of its own.
"We're always getting stories from our readers saying some amazing thing is going on, and we know that it's an area that isn't being covered elsewhere," Alimonti said. "We think this is something that is very right for the magazine so it will be a large program initiative for us."
Selecciones' redesign coincides with a company-wide redesign that began with the rollout in January of the English-language Reader's Digest, a move initiated by editor Peggy Northrup, formerly of Meredith's More Magazine, at the direction of Mary Berner, CEO, Reader's Digest Association.
"There's really been sort of a culture change and a refocusing of attention on the [editorial] products themselves in the past year, so we looked at Reader's Digest in particular and our intention was to make that investment and roll it out globally," Alimonti said.
The Selecciones' redesign also will be paired with other initiatives expected to be announced in the coming weeks that extend to digital and other projects, including an expanded Web site aimed at Hispanics that is scheduled to debut in late November, Alimonti said.
The Web redo is part of a company-wide digital investment that already has resulted in the revamp of the English-language Reader's Digest Web site and AllRecipes.com in the past year, Alimonti said. "They've added video and polling tools and all the things that you would expect in a Web 2.0 platform."
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