Month: June 2010

We have the magazines with Justin Bieber on the cover laid out in a row in our teen and music magazine area.  Most are selling, a couple are not.  The ACP Bieber fanzine has done well for us.

Our instore radio, newsXpress Radio, has his current hit on high rotation so this may be helping drive sales.

Pacific Magazines has a Bieber title coming out later this month.

Sales of issue #2 of the Master Chef magazine are excellent in many of the the newsagencies for which I have seen sales data – across several states.  I am hearing of 60% and 70% sell through already, just a few days into the on sale.  In several stores, sales are well ahead of the same period for issue #1.  This is great news as there is usually a dip for issue #2 of a launch.

While we are promoting Master Chef next to our main newspaper stand we are also using it to leverage sales of other products elsewhere in the store.

I am amazed at the value of the 2010 FIFA World Cup to newsagents.  Magazines, trading cards, collector tins, supporter clothing and a range of fan items … all sorts of World Cup merchandise is selling very well.  I have seen newsagencies where World Cup magazine sales are well above $1,000 – four times what these newsagencies would usually sell in sports magazines in a month.  It is an excellent fillip to our magazine sales given magazine sales so far this year.

While the World Cup is not working for everyone, it is certainly working for plenty of stores I speak with.

We are promoting the latest issue of Dolly out the front of the shop, facing into the mall.  Hopefully, the free watch will drive interest.  We also have a terrific display of Dolly in with the teen magazines.

While I am no expert on such things, my sense is that teen girls are over the freebies which come with Dolly and Girlfriend.  They have been inundated over the last year and probably prefer a good magazine over a gift which seems to be almost too good to be true.  While such gifts are not on every magazine, they are on enough to make the shoppers jaded.

We are promoting the Latest issue of Good Health magazine at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle.  I like Good health, it’s what I’d call an honest magazine.  The latest issue comes with a free Snack Smart Guide – a gift which fits with the title.  Our prime location placement reflects our confidence around this issue.  We plan to leave this display in place for at least a week.  We are also supporting the title with a good display in its usual location.

The health category is more crowded than ever and this is making it challenging for every title to pull focus.  One shots and infrequent titles soak up space, and cash.    Good Health has it a bit easier than others since it is from ACP and newsagents have display obligations.

A customer bought last month’s issue of Dolly early yesterday morning before we had put the latest issue out.  She wanted the free umbrella which came with the magazine and not the magazine itself – because of the heavy rain outside.  Bonus!

The latest issue of Sactown, a bimonthly magazine covering Sacramento, has a mandarin and a slice of a mandarin on the cover – promoting a local festival.  Readers can scratch the mandarin slice and sniff, yep, mandarin.  I like the idea of scratch and sniff in this situation.  It offers a good local connection.  Mediacoder has more on this.

We have been promoting car magazines out the front of the newsagency, facing into the mall, since Monday.  The simple display has resulted in some sales and plenty of browsing.  The display faces shoppers as they leave the mall heading to the car park.

By using Top Gear on either side of the display we are drawing attention to the display using a well known brand.  In the middle, as the photo shows, we have a mix which plays to our range point of difference over other magazine retailers.

While only in place for a few days, the work is worth it as it plays to our strength as a newsagency.

I think that displays like this are essential for newsagents.  Too often we only focus on top selling magazines and miss the opportunity to promote depth of range.  This depth is where we find customers who stay with a newsagency for the long term.

We are promoting the latest issue of Cosmopolitan in its usual location this week even though it is not the focus of any publisher promotion.  The simple display is easily seen by everyone entering our women’s magazine aisle.  We have made the space available for this display for a week.

It was terrific to see Frankie magazine profiles on ABC1’s 7:30 Report tonight. This is a title I first acknowledged in August last year as one of two delivering good sales growth. The Frankie story is good for Melbourne and for niche magazines and that makes it good for newsagents as we are the main home of niche magazines in Australia.

The footage of Frankie in a retail situation was shot at mag nation in Melbourne.  It was good to see the barcode labels from my newsagency software company in the TV report too.

Libra Invisible pads are, well, not as invisible as their marketing pitch suggests. Take a look at a stack of copies of the latest issue of Shop Til You Drop in the photo. The invisible pads make the magazines difficult to stack. I wondered what was bulking up the magazines and was surprised to discover that it was a product called Invisible.

Now I am no expert when it comes to feminine products, but I would have thought that something called invisible would be, well, less visible than this Libra product.

I would not have noticed had they put two packs in – one at the top of the page and one at the bottom.

The alternative is that they could have the freebie behind the counter and we hand it out. Hmm, probably not.

It turns out that the folks at Libra like magazines as a means of promoting their Invisible pads – Shop Til you Drop is not the only title with a freebie. The latest issue of Cosmopolitan has Invisible visible as well.

Footnote: I was talking with a colleague in the office about this yesterday and her comment was that she would never use one of these products from inside a magazine.