Day: July 3, 2010

The Julia Gillard cover on Who magazine, out yesterday, encouraged us to create a display at the prime impulse location between our two busiest sales counters.

My assessment is that in the right impulse location, the cover is likely to achieve incremental business for us.  hence the use of prime space for the small display.

In terms of the display itself, we have followed our usual simple approach for these things: creating only a couple of layers, nothing too fancy and letting the product speak for itself.  The display is not bordered by other products – it has a clear spotlight.

This counter location is succesful for around 75% of our placements.  I am happy with that strike rate.

Our tactical placement of Philosophy Now with newspapers on Monday is working well.  In five days we have matched our usual sales for the total on-sale.  I’d expect us to sell out before the next issue comes out.  The Is God Really Dead? cover is the reason – you can see people notice it when they go to pick up a newspaper.

We are taking the opportunity to promote the latest issue of The Week magazine with Julia Gillard on the cover on our main newspaper stand for the next few days.  The cover is excellent and with the new PM in a honeymoon period it should achieve some extra business for us.  We have two perspex pockets on our newspaper stand, one above The Age and one above the Herald Sun, for tactical title placement.  Our goal is to turn newspaper sales into newspaper + magazine sales.  With the right title they work very well for us.