An Experiment in Newsstand Magazine Sales

The function of a magazine cover is to sell magazines; in particular, to sell magazines at the newsstand (subscriptions have already been bought and paid for). The more interesting and attractive the editors can make the cover, the more magazines they can sell. For whatever reason, the editors of Cosmopolitan believed that putting a vacant model on the cover of their magazine was the best way to sell it.

Sometime in 1995, it seemed to me that the Cosmo girl woke up a bit. Not entirely, mind you. In fact, it was quite subtle. But the gaze seemed a little less fixed; the expression a little less slack. And the change persisted from month to month.

Then, in the summer of 1996, Cosmopolitan decided to perform a controlled experiment. They ran three dramatically different covers over 3 consecutive months.

• The first month, the Cosmo girl reverted to her former, vacant self. If anything, she was more vacant than ever. Utterly slack. Nothing there.
• The second month, she had one of her tits hanging out. You couldn't quite see the nipple. They pushed it right to the limit of what you can sell in grocery stores in the United States.
• The third month, she woke up. Bright eyed, engaging smile, making eye contact with the reader. The way people look when the haven't been hit over the head with a telephone book.

Apparently, sales were highest the third month, because the Cosmo girl has been awake ever since.

Notes

sell magazines

For an inside account of this business, see Tony Rothman, A Physicist On Madison Avenue, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991

reason

Thinking up plausible reasons is left as an exercise for the reader. Whatever it was, it was probably a good reason: there's a lot of money at stake in these matters.

subtle

My wife holds that there was no change at all.

decided

This is conjecture on my part, but the evidence seems compelling.

months

I don't recall the exact dates, or the actual order that the covers ran.

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