The cover and accompanying marketing collateral for Cosmopolitan this month stand out, among the best creative I have seen for visually noisy newsagencies in a long time. The yellow is sassy and sells the magazine well. I’d expect a sales lift as a result of the look the team behind the magazine has created. We have placed the posters at the end of the main women’s magazine aisle – shoppers see this as they enter. We also have a half waterfall for the title itself.
I expect crosswords to be successful on the new Apple iPad – driving more to the new device. Crosswords is the first the first application available for iPad with crosswords, puzzles and pastimes. Click on the image to see a larger version. It looks easy to read. Playing is very easy – it uses the smart Apple interface to provide a good experience.
Australian newsagents are being held back by newspaper and magazine publishers not working together on a single IT pipeline with newsagents. The handling of the price change for Best Bets last week is a good example of how relying on a manual process can cost money and time for newsagents.
Newspaper publishers were going to operate with XchangeIT when it first launched years ago. Negotiations had gone on for some time and an agreement had been negotiated. Unfortunately, they pulled out the day before the official launch. I did not agree with their reasoning then. Today, years on, newsagents have missed out, newspaper publishers let us down by not enabling us to access greater efficiency. No, having to go to a website is not efficient for us.
I am undertaking another newsagent retail sales benchmark study comparing sales for January-March 2010 against January-March 2009.
Tower Newsagents can participate by sending a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box to exclude home deliveries, and tick the box for a category breakdown. Set your first date range (on the left) to January 1, 2010 to March 31, 2010 and the date range of the right to one year earlier.
Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@towersystems.com.au. I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.
NOTE: If you are running our latest software, you can click on the BENCHMARK icon on your desktop, enter the January through March date range and have the software do the rest. If you have not used our direct email facilities – to email customer accounts or to email Gordon and Gotch supply changes, the software will ask for some email details from you. This takes a few seconds to setup.
Non Tower newsagents can participate by emailing me for a copy of a spreadsheet template I have prepared.
As with past benchmarks, I expect to get data from between 100 and 120 newsagencies in the next week. The results will provide an indication of sales performance year on year and give newsagents something with which to compare their businesses.
Check out the list published by Apply of websites ready for the iPad. You can add to this the media outlets with apps for the iPad.
While existing outlets are racing to the new platform, I expect to see new media businesses emerge given that the barrier to entry has just been reduced with the new device.
In response to posts and comments on this blog, the publisher of the soon to launch milk magazine is offering newsagents direct supply and a margin of 40%. They are planning a range of marketing activity to support the new title and will provide newsagents with A3 posters for in-store display.
I always cheer when I see a publisher directly engaging with newsagents in this way. I am especially thrilled that they are trying a direct supply model. I hope that newsagents support milk and find sales success from stocking it.
It appears that not all newsagents may have receiced notice from Fairfax of a price increase (to $5.25 from April 2) for Best Bets and sold the issue for a day before others alerted them to the change. If it were just one or two who said they missed the price rise I’d wonder. Given the number of newsagents I have heard from over the last 24 hours I suspect some failure in the notification processes of Fairfax.
Executive Editor of Time magazine Nancy Gibbs was interviewed by Katie Couric for her show @katiecouric recently. The discussion centred on the future of magazines. Gibbs expresses uncertainty about the future of print but no doubt about the future of publishing.
Here comes Everybody by Clay Shirky was published in 2008. Given that it’s primarily about social media, it is already somewhat out of date. That said, it is a good read about group activities made possible by social media. He talks about sharing, collaboration and collective action.
What struck me while reading the book is that for a channel so challenged by social media we continue to miss an opportunity to truly embrace it. Sure, some newsagents are using Twitter, facebook and other social media platforms, we as a channel are not using social media to create an online channel equivalent to presence and connection as we have in the bricks and mortar world.
It’s not too late as Shirky says: one of the things I most hope readers get out of it, is an excitement about how much experimentation is still possible, and how many new uses of our social tools are waiting to be invented.
I have been helping some newsagents embrace social media at the store level. What I’d really like to do is engage in a channel wide project which leverages social media platforms and our physical local presence to improve our relevance in a changed media world.
Social media and other online strategies present opportunities for newsagents to promote their businesses and connect with communities outside our four walls.
We see our newsagency businesses as community focused. Community usually means within a relatively short distance to our shops. The community Shirky speaks of is geographically further apart but still close in terms of connection to the business.
I see newsagencies, in part, as special interest retailers. Special interests can draw people from far away if the interest is dear to their heart and if you have what they want. We have found this with volcano calendars, train magazines and other product. In these cases, word of mouth is our social media. Social media sites can be used to supplement this word of mouth. This is an opportunity for us.
Is this the magazine stand of the future? Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to be selling iTunes cards in my newsagencies. They are working well as an impulse purchase, especially with a greeting card. They are working better than when we were selling CDs.
iTunes cards are as good as music since that is why people buy them. So, the comparison with CD sales is relevant. Whether they will be compared to magazine sales will depend on the consumer and publisher uptake of the iPad here in Australia. It will also depend on whether we have any break-out new publishers creating digital only product which appeals to the Australian masses.
Since we can’t sell the devices, selling the cards and top-up is the closest we can get.
My newsagency software company hosts around 80 face to face user meetings a year and it was during the current round, listening to newsagent interaction, that I wondered whether a similar type of forum could work for newsagents.
At the Tower Systems forums we meet face to face with our customers, share news, discuss ideas and gratefully receive feedback. It is a good forum – away from day to day business, more relaxed. I think it works for our customers as well as it works for us.
So, I was wondering if such a forum could work for newsagents – we do, after all, say customer service is a key point of difference for us. We say it but do we really ask our customers, do we give them an opportunity to engage with us on the topic. I have been thinking about my blog post about customer service last week.
It could be held at the shop or a local hall. The goal would be to ask customers for their feedback so that together you (and them) can build a better newsagency experience – customers are stakeholders after all.
I appreciate that the idea sounds odd, anything new does. Imagine the benefit if you got one great idea from the forum or if those attending left truly believing in your commitment to the local community. Both outcomes would be valuable for you and for those participating.
Sometimes we need to play outside the norm and our comfort zone to really innovate.
I was disappointed to see the subscription promotion on the cover of the latest issue of Run For Your Life magazine (out yesterday).
Their $9.95 promotion looked odd next to our $7.95 barcode label.
While I understand the role subscriptions play in the sales mix for a publisher, it is wrong that they use our generosity of space to try and convert our customers and browsers into subscribers. By all means have a subscription offer – but promote it inside the pages of the magazine.
I call what we do for them generous because we provide space to promote their title at no cost to them, we carry the risk of theft, we finance the title for a couple of months and we pay to return to them the unsold copies. This is a considerable investment on our part for their title.
I’d prefer to see the publisher engage positively with newsagents by including a putaway coupon inside the magazine and promoting at clubs and sports events that the title in available from newsagencies.
We are promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine and the free Fanpire magazine at the exit of our women’s (and teens) magazine aisle. While not the prettiest display, it is functional – placing both covers ay eyelevel to catch attention as shoppers leave the aisle. We also have the magazine folded out in double pockets in its usual location with teen titles.
Depending on space availability we may give the title a run with the major weeklies through Easter – the cover of the Fanpire magazine is what will sell this issue to irregular buyers of the title and to fans of the Twilight franchise.
Thanks to the extraordinary sales of Better Homes and Gardens last month – we sold out our initial allocation and all the extra copies we ordered – we have placed the latest issue at our prime counter position. We also have placed a couple of pockets in with our weeklies and a full waterfall in the usual location for the title.
Better Homes and Gardens responds well to aggressive co-location in the first week and for the weekends thereafter.
This issue is also being promoted on our in-store radio from yesterday morning.