The date is covered on The Age newspaper masthead today by an ad for Lite n Easy. The ad also covers most of the crest of the newspaper. The is the same and and placement from October 5. If the crest, company motto and date are not that important, why not incorporate a permanent ad block in the masthead? These ads disrespect the medium and the brand.
Newspaper publishers are missing opportunities to grow their businesses by not directly engaging with retail newsagents. They will engage directly with supermarkets on promotions as well as convenience stores, petrol outlets and coffee shops. But not retail only newsagents.
While I understand the challenge they face navigating the distribution newsagent relationship, by standing behind this wall, as it is in some cases I hear about, they miss sales growth opportunities.
There are plenty of proactive retail only newsagents keen to work with publishers on growing sales. I know because of the direct feedback I had to my post here past week on this topic.
The next step is up to the publishers. Do they want to grow sales in the retail newsagent channel? If so, engage!
The photo shows a newspaper home delivery run list on an Apple iPhone. This is one of several forms a newspaper delivery run list can take on an iPhone. The feed comes from the newsagency home delivery software. Sexy huh?!
Newsagent software from my company, Tower Systems, has been interfacing to portable in-car devices since the early 1990s. The iPhone interface has been available since before the iPhone was officially released here in Australia. We like it because it is slim and can be easily stuck to the dashboard.
The benefits of all these portable in-car devices are a significant reduction in the use of paper and an equally significant saving of time – thereby enabling changes to be handled closer to the actual delivery.
While I do question the long term viability of newspaper home delivery – given a publisher controlled model which does not permit newsagents to act as independent business people – many of us continue to be involved in helping newsagents drive efficiency.
The iPhone interface is one of a range of time and money saving management tools available to distribution newsagents directly from the Tower Systems home delivery software.
The Amazon Kindle reader will be available for Australian a week from tomorrow. Which Australian newspaper and which Australian magazine will be first to offer a Kindle subscription through Amazon?
Rupert delivered a major speech at the World Media Summit in China late last week. Click here for a full copy While focused on China, it would make interesting reading to any newsagent. Here is a small quote:
The challenge of fusing past and present is real for media companies, and for China. Our aim must be to enhance the lives of our customers and citizens, and yet we find ourselves in the midst of an information revolution that is both exciting and unsettling. It is a digital revolution turning traditional business models upside down … traversing geographic, industrial, and media boundaries … and creating a new source of wealth, material and social, around the world.
He also addresses the issue of paying for content. A case he has to make for the future viability of News Corp. and other media companies.
Too often the conventional media response to the internet has been inchoate. A medium once thought too powerful has often seemed impotent in the past few years. Of course there should be a price paid for quality content, and yet large media organizations have been submissive in the face of the flat-earthers who insisted that all content should be free all the time. The sun does not orbit the earth, and yet this was precisely the premise that the press passively accepted, even though there have been obvious signs that readers recognize the reality that they should pay a price.
Read what some others say about the speech: Newsweek, Jeff Jarvis, Danny Sullivan and the Village Voice.
Marge Simpson a Playboy cover girl? Who’d have thought? She features on the cover of the November edition of the US Playboy – out this week. Do we respond by giving this issue a more public location? I suspect not. I do wonder, however, what it will do for sales. Simpson collectors are sure to want a copy. Reuters has more on this move.
The display of green magazines which we started in May continues to work for us. It expands as necessary with new titles and special issues. As the photo shows, we have it between gardening and home and living titles. Shoppers leaving our women’s aisle get to see this selection. We also have some of the titles in the more traditional location, our science and environment section – but that is in a less busy aisle.
We use beacon branding principles to promote these titles. This means using defining mastheads in a blocked way to draw attention to a section. For example, this section will always be headed with at least two, maybe more, pockets with the word green on the masthead.
I’ve seen shopper research indicating that beacon branding is key to driving sales is departments with considerable stock – such as the magazine department.
I was surprised to learn that NANA (NSW newsagent association) is promoting (but not endorsing – according to them) The Stench in this Parliament by Ruth Richmond. Check out the flyer here. That it has been sent seems like an endorsemeent. If NANA is receiving a fee for access to the newsagency channel it needs to disclose this – not the quantum of the fee but that a fee has been paid.
If NANA is not receiving a fee, I’d ask why they have become involved?
AAP is reporting that USA Today, the #1 selling newspaper in the US, is set to announce a 17% decline in circulation. While the decline will be blamed on the economy, there must be an acceptance, behind closed doors, that it is in part due to disruption caused by new channels. USA Today is one of many newspapers available in electronic form on the Amazon Kindle e-reader. It is ranked third in the newspaper segment of the Kindle store.
Four days ago I posted here my thoughts about driving over the counter sales of newspapers in the Australian newsagency channel. Smart publishers would be proactive and engage with us as business partners on a shared challenge. Instead, many remain disconnected and focus on gimmicks to drive short term circulation spurts to deliver better numbers.
Our team at Forest Hill accepted the offer of this free stand for promoting Vogue, Vogue Living and GQ. I like the small footprint, that it is easily moved and the professional corporate branding. I also like that it is promoting titles which do not often, in our store at least, get prime promotional space. This stand makes it easier for us and should drive sales.
I know we can be overloaded sometimes with stands. The key is to manage floor time. That’s what we will do with this Vogue stand. We will rest it in a couple of weeks and then bring it back.
I like that we had the option on taking this stand. By agreeing, we are committed to using it for the long term. Regulars here would see how we reuse stands, even cardboard units.
Our music magazine section covers 54 pockets and carries 40 different titles. Based on data I see from many newsagencies, this is a challenged segment of the magazine department. While there are die hard fans of the magazine medium, collectors and the like, sales are not what they used to be. The best illustration of this is browser traffic on busy trading days.
Eliot Van Buskirk, writing at Wired makes sense when commenting on the future of music journalism:
Music journalism should live on the same devices where we listen to our music — be that a computer, cellphone, MP3 player, tablet or home entertainment center. In other words, perhaps the same technologists who are making the reviews section in music magazines obsolete are capable of saving music journalism.
As Eliot says,a techncology base for music journalism offers many opportunities:
In addition to reviews, recommendations could become part of this system. If you give the thumbs-up to what a particular writer said about a particular album, the app could recommend more stuff you should listen to.
Check out morning paper, an old blog from 2003 showing images of the morning paper as received by the blogger. A nice is somewhat melancholy catalogue, especially if you like newspapers.
It was interesting hearing the imminent arrival of the Kindle on our shores covered on the 3AW breakfast program this morning. They had fun talking about the technology and then turned to the gloomy future of print media. It sounded inevitable.
It is this type of discussion which adds to the inevitability of some consumers transitioning from print to digital.
As Australians, high profile and not, start to talk about the Kindle it will gain the traction which some commentators are in denial about today.
I am shocked to see some retailers, including newsagents, are discounting calendars. This does not make sense so early in the season. Trawl back through blog posts here over the last five years and you’ll see that I have learned my lesson on calendar discounting – leave it until after January 1.
While discounts of 25% and 50% – yes I have seen this already this year – may drive calendar sales, this gives up margin unnecessarily in my view.
The key to maintaining maximum margin with calendars is range. What the team at Forest Hill is achieving this year is proof of that. Sales are up 14% on last year. What makes this even more special is that our store manager controls the range. He has backed himself and it is resulting in excellent dividends.
By holding the line on price, based on an excellent range and brilliant customer service, we are banking good results. It is not too late for all newsagents to take this approach.
The Remedies range has been pitched to us by a magazine merchandising company with the line that the products are endorsed by the ANF and VANA. The endorsement is worthless in my eyes. These associations should become good associations before they start to branch out into endorsing headache tablets.
The ANF Board cut secret a deal in 2003 with Dial Time, part of Bill Express, for which some newsagents continue to pay today. Over the five years the ANF made over a million dollars at a cost to member newsagents.
Any commercial deal between the ANF and suppliers, like Remidies, needs to be subject to complete transparency. Otherwise, newsagents cannot trust that it is in their best interests. Read what the ANF had to say in National Newsagent magazine about Bill Express in 2003 / 2004.
Forrester Reserach in the US has forecast sales of e-reader devices (for reading books, magazines and newspapers) at 3 million in 2009 and a doubling of this in 2010. Trawl back through digital music player sales and you will see similar growth. Read what Om Malik has to say about the latest developments and where he thinks the price need to get to make a more significant impact.
We have two magazines in the health section offering the same free pedometers. While the publishers were not to know, it is frustrating because the point of difference benefit is diluted. While the photo shows the two titles together, we will separate them so that one does not pull focus from the other. Ranking relationships, Good Health is the title on which we focus our attention.
I have secured two tickets to the newsXpress conference in Melbourne next week to give away. They are valued at $495 each and include access to all conference events from the Wednesday evening opening function and meal, the sessions on Thursday and Friday and the gala dinner Thursday evening. Click here for a copy of the conference brochure.
If you would like to take one of the two available free tickets, please contact me by email and let me know.
Magazine distributor NDD offers a Quick Range Review service. They assess title performance and create recommended changes based on this. Newsagents can have the recommendations implemented or adjust these further. The recommendations are provided with a sell-through graph showing overall performance trends.
I have used this service myself. It is easy and does result in more efficient supply. I recommend newsagents undertake this quick range review at least every six months.
The result is a better balanced portfolio of titles from NDD. The report helps drive better business decisions in that it alerts you to titles which are selling well – these are the titles you could push even further.
If you would like an NDD Quick range Review, please email quickrangereview@ndd.com.au with your newsagency details. They will do the analysis and email the report and recommendations to you.
This is an excellent service, one which should be taken up by newsagents who want to achieve a more efficient magazine department.
A report overnight that Rupert Murdoch is in Asia looking at potential e-reader partners has sparked hundreds of related online reports. Australian newsagents cannot ignore the potential impact the opening of a new news distribution channel will have on our channel, especially a channel controlled by a publisher – as opposed to more indepdendent channels such as the Kindle and Sony e-reader.
Hallmark provided this stand for use at the counter to display one of their new sound cards. Almost immediately we put this out at the counter and it started generating sales. It invites testing the card and listening to the music. We change the card daily – sometimes more often when the actual sample card itsefl is purchased. I have seen customers come to the counter, try the sample car and go back to the range of Hallmark soundcards and chose one.
The Hallmark sound cards continue to perform extremely well for us – in our newsagencies as well as our gift shops. My only frustration is a lack of visual merchandising material with whicch to do an off-location display beyond the counter display.
Movement, which arrived with yesterday’s magazines, is not a magazine. It’s a DVD inside a fold out envelope. Nothing to browse except for a track list on the back. I agreed to take this ‘title’ without seeing the product. Now I have seen it, I am not so sure. The DVD is what customers will want. It can be easily removed from the flimsy case. While we could keep it behind the counter, that would be another item to be tracked separately. If it is stolen, do we get a credit if its stolen? I’d expect so. for the future I think I’ll cancel this title as it is not the usual magazine fit.
The production people at ACP Magazines forgot to check the latest issue of Good Health against the nice counter units they sent out a few months ago. The magazine which arrived yesterday is too big. Like many newsagents, we will remove the counter unit. This increases the likelihood of it being lost and the ACP investment being wasted. It is small points like this which publishers often miss and wonder why their collateral is not used as expected.
Amazon’s Kindle reader is available to be shipped to Australia from October 19. Gizmodo has the details. This is a big move for Australia, long overdue. We have not experienced the Amazon affect here. Click here to see Amazon’s announcement.
While publishers are likely to pour cold water on the Kindle announcement, one only has to look at its success in the US.
