Received reports this morning of newspapers being put into Civic Video outlets. Not sure if it’s a national strategy but already there are reports of three Civic Video stores involved. In two cases the Video outlets are next to newsagencies. News Ltd seems to be the publisher involved. The same publisher pushing their newspaper product into Big W and McDonalds. (Fairfax have their relationship with Starbucks.)
I could understand newspaper publishers pursuing these non traditional outlets if they were likely to get their product in front of eyeballs new to their product that day. However, given the broad retail availability of newspapers already this is unlikely.
Recent experience suggests that this move will not achieve incremental sales. Existing channels will suffer with the moat pain inflicted on newsagents – the only specialist newspaper retail channel in Australia. But taking sales from newsagents publishers play with the fine balance of these quintessentially Australian businesses and pressure a domino impact across magazines, greeting cards, lottery products and stationery.
Newspaper publishers would be better advised to focus on their product, make it even more appealing and driving traffic to the specialist retailers who will support their initiatives with bold in store displays and added value marketing strategies. There are plenty of newsagents demonstrating that above average sales growth can be achieved in same store situations.
Turning the newspaper purchase into an impulse purchase (through Civic Video) as opposed to a destination purchase (in a newsagency) demonstrates, in my view, a shift in respect for the newspaper product.
