The image shows the sales decay for New Idea between Monday last week and mid Saturday afternoon compared to the average for three weeks at this time last year. In addition to excellent overall year on year growth being achieved for New Idea (against trend I’d note), you can see the impact of the early publication on sales for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Yes, a terrific sales bump, vindicating the decision to go early.
What is interesting in the decay curve is that the Thursday on-sale of the special issue did not create a Monday-like spike. Sales were strong for sure, but not as high as we see on a Monday. I think this is representative of habit. It will be interesting to see our sales for this coming Monday.
Being in a shopping centre, we are better placed than a high street located newsagency to leverage sales on a Thursday and the weekend.