Month: August 2009

That’s Life is a hero magazine for our newsagency in terms of sales so it is natural that we seized the opportunity to drive sales when we receive marketing collateral built around a new campaign supporting the title. We have placed the display in the photo at the front of our newsagency, acting as a billboard to passers-by and to drive sales.

I love the marketing collateral for That’s Life as it presents a genuinely cheerful image at the entrance to our newsagency.

Here is what I know about That’s Life customers – they are loyal not only to the title but also to the newsagency.  I see this in shopping basket data.  They love the price point for the title.  They also connect with the pitch of: Laugh, Win, Love.

The loyalty we see in That’s Life customers is driven, in part, by our magazine Club Card loyalty program.

We will leave the display in place until the weekend, maybe shorter if sales drive us low on stock.

Given the tremendous success we had last month, we are pitching the latest issue of Good Health at the entrance to our main magazine aisle – where we have our weeklies, women’s interest, food and gardening titles.

While the fixture is not ideal for this display, it works for us – customers buy off right off the display and that is all the matters.

The display is made easier thanks to the variation in marketing collateral provided to support the title.

The re-launch of Good Health has resulted in a better product which is easier for us to pitch.

Sometimes you have to break the magazine display rules to drive sales.  They do this really well in our Frankston newsagency by placing fashion titles targeting a young reader with teen magazines.  These titles work better in this location than in the women’s magazines aisle – how often do you see a teen or ealry twentysomething girl look in the fashion segment for magazines?

What our Frankston team does is a good example of the value of breaking rules sometimes.

We selected Cosmopolitan for our prime counter display today because of the free Impulse scent with the magazine.  We only received one poster so we had to improvise.  The Just In bookmark has been included to try and draw more attention to the display.

I like how the Impulse offer with Cosmopolitan is attached to the magazine – at the lower left corner.  This makes displaying the title easier and does not take up the space you often find with gifts.

Most magazine publishers prefer their titles to be displayed on the flat stack- the flat shelf at the base of the magazine display.  It is the only place, in traditional magazine fixturing, where the whole front cover is on display. Publishers prefer this because they think this is where customers look.  Newsagents regularly receive bulletins from publishers and magazine distributors asking for this location.

Some publishers even go as far as asking merchandisers to move their magazines to the flat when in-store.  This creates tension in some retail situations – it is the retailer’s shop after-all.  (Merchandisers should not move stock without permission from the newsagent.)

My observations are that the majority of customers navigate to an area of a shop by what they see at or close to eye-level.  Once they are in the area they want, around 70% browse by what is in the fixture and 30% browse by the flat stack.

While this will vary from newsagency to newsagency, I think it is a mistake for p[ublishers to primarily focus on the flat stack when guiding newsagents as to product placement.