The flyer from News Magazines seeking newsagent engagement in promoting the latest issue of Australian Good Taste represents what is wrong with many publisher promotions in my view. It offers a reward for a great display which is left up for the longest time. There is no reward sales achievement and no reward for being clever.
So what is the message I am to take away from this? Of course it is do great displays. Yep, billboards are what publishers want. More so than sales. More so than smart retailer engagement. Oh, and they want the display up for a long time. Yes, that makes sense.
It is unfair of me to single out News Magazines as most magazine publishers take the same approach.
If magazine publishers want newsagents to grow sales, they should stop offering prizes for great displays. Great displays act as billboards in our high traffic businesses and probably help sales in other retail channels.
Magazine publishers should start rewarding newsagents for performance and clever engagement.
- Reward the best incremental sales achieved. Sure achieving sales growth is harder than creating pretty display but retail is all about sales right?!
- Reward smart tactical placement. A clever placement of Australian Good Taste, for example with weekly magazines or in a simple counter display could be far more valuable than a pretty display.
- Reward clever retail theatre. Warrick Hosking cooked with his slow cooker live in store and sold 20 copies of the Slow Cooker cookbook. This was a one day display but it sold out all remaining stock. Our own Moroccan cookbook display is not the type of billboard display publishers like but I betit will sell more magazines.
Some magazine publishers moan that newsagents do not engage as business people. That is because you don’t treat them as business people.
Stop offering cash rewards for good displays. It sends the wrong message.
Treat me like a business person in every engagement and I am more likely to act like a business person.
What do magazine publishers want from newsagents? Sales, I hope.
I DON’T NEED THEIR $500 PRIZE $$ ,But i hope they will advertise on tv to get more exposure. no magazines last more than 3 weeks displays in my shop except regular monthlies.
if you are a smaller agent like myself grabbing the $500 is probally worth while for doing up a great display . eg i did a massive diplay for the soccer and for what i probally made a $50 profit from my sales i left it up for a few weeks just waiting on the sales to kick in but it never happened so yeah i would go for the $500 .$500 and no need to carry a couple of grand worth of mags sounds good to me .
Shauns,
what are the chances to win??? after all the great effort you put in..
Last week there was a request to feature the new iPad APP guide, we received 6, I did the display and sold all 6. So I went to the G&G website to order some more and received an out of stock message. What was the use? The recall was week 35 so I could have sold more!
Eric i have buckleys chances as i didn’t even receive this flyer so i must not be worthy of there little competition .,But i don’t see the harm in the competition i see it as a bit more of a get up and go inititative . by all means i see marks points being a lot better than how it is run at the moment but hey we are dealing with magazine companys here and we should grab at the small steps and by all means give them ideas on better ways of working to get better sales
Same display left up for a long time looks boring though…
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Off-topic, anyway to get a better captcha-code in place? I swear I typed the code in correctly and it still came up as invalid. (Has happened before also.)
Rewards for outcome is what I want to see. If I was to put in the effort of doing displays, I want a return on sales. I don’t want to be a supplier’s billboard and ‘hope’ that I would win a $500 prize when I can promote other products with the space used.
Golden Casket in Queensland offered some cash prizes to invoke incremental sales. A great idea and a great reward for driving sales. This is something I like to see more – win win situation.