We have been promoting the Latest issue of Women’s Health magazine at my newsagencies. The most successful approach we have found is in-location displays as the photo shows. It makes Women’s Health the hero title in the women’s magazine aisle for the first week of the on-sale. We pull back but slightly in subsequent weeks. I’d note that this location is on the same side and just one step away from marie claire, Cosmolpolitan and Cleo.
Buy and Sell Classifieds, a Queensland classifieds title distributed by IPS, will be running a Television campaign to promote their classifieds newspaper. The campaign will be running on Queensland digital channels 11 and One HD for remainder of the year.
While the ad does not tag newsagents it should certainly raise awareness of the title, offering a good reason to give the title prominent positioning in-store. This is what I would do if I were in Queensland.
activ8me is one of the companies tied up with the Bill Express mess and they have been announced as a seller of NBN satellite and some other services. Technology Spectator has the story.
For a bit of background on activa8me and where it sat within the Bill Express mess click here. For more on Bill Express, click on the link to the right.
While I’m no lawyer, I would have thought that there were enough concerns on the tale regarding the lineage of activ8me for it to not be part of the NBN story. But, hey, maybe it’s all been cleaned up…
Paid Content is reporting strong engagement with magazine related content on Apple’s Newsstand platform. Newsstand is certainly impressive in its functionality.
I have been talking with newsagents recently who made changes to their card supply arrangements which have resulted in them being worse off.
One newsagent switched from one the major card companies to a smaller company on the claim that sales would increase and the offer of a margin boost. Their sales, year on year, are down 25% following the move. The extra 5% margin they negotiated is worth nothing. They are worse off. It is easy for a card company to offer a bag of cash or a boost in margin. The harder road is to help you boos sales. However, boosting sales is better for you.
Another newsagent went from 100% with one company to 75%. The net increase in sales year on year was 2%. However, the sales drop for their main supplier, due to 25% less pockets, resulted in the newsagents dropping to a lower rebate grouping. Financially, they are considerably worse off. A lack of research leading up to making the decision has resulted in them losing money.
Some card company sales representatives are less than accurate when outlining hat a switch to their business would mean for the newsagent.
My advice to newsagents is caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
The two newsagents I have worked with don’t have anything to go off and cannot therefore easily get out of their worse-off situation.
We are still seeing growth in food magazine sales as a result of the magazine relay I undertook a month ago, nice double digit growth. This is a category we shuffle a couple of times each week, responding to new titles as they come out.
We are maintaining excellent positioning for the anniversary issue of donna hay magazine while also promoting the latest issue of MasterChef and promoting the latest issue of Feast magazine.
I do the shuffling when I am in the store myself as I see this as a senior management task. Too often newsagents leave choices about magazines to be made by juniors … and they then wonder why magazine sales are not what they need.
I urge newsagents to look t the magazines and invest the time in completing relay. There is money to be made from a small investment of time.
The counter is the best location for read ezy 2012 calendar. Shoppers often ask for this. Having it at the counter makes offering the upsell easy too.
With an excellent margin, more than double magazine margin, it’s a product worth pitching to anyone 65 and over and those with family and friends who are 65 or more.
This is the kind of product that some people will not think abut until late in the season – offering it to shoppers now is doing them a good service and driving sales basket efficiency.
I don’t understand some US magazine publishers. At magazines.com there is a SALE running at the moment offering a bunch of magazine titles for $1 per issue or less. Time magazine, for example, is available for $16 for 28 issues, Good Housekeeping has 12 issues for $7.97. These are US only offers for US published titles.
Yes, the US model is different to Australia. But that different that they have to devalue their product this much? I’d want people to buy my title because of the value they see through reading the title rather than some cheap-ass deal.
Crazy.
I have been working with another newsagent this week on an employee theft / fraud issue. It was the lax processes around managing cash which led to the newsagent being hit for at least $50,000. They did not worry about balancing their registers accurately each night, they also did not manage stock on hand. These weaknesses in processes invited the thief to act… and they did.
Check of the story in the Herald Sun yesterday about employee theft.
Newsagents are their own worst enemies sometimes. Here are some very basic rules to help newsagents avoid employee theft.
If the newsagent I was working with balanced their cash daily and tracked cigarette inventory they would have uncovered the problem much sooner.
Cutting the cost of employee theft in a newsagents is straightforward, all it takes is will on the part of the newsagent.
An Australian edition of Moshie Monsters magazine goes on sale today. It has tremendous potential given the reported 5 million Australian Moshi Monsters users and given strong TV promotion on both free to air and pay TV starting today. Targeting 6 to 12 year olds, this new monthly title could help us increase traffic and sales in our kids section, a magazine section which has been challenged in recent years.
I plan on us making the most of the launch with a good display in a high traffic location. It’s the kind of title which could work at the counter, especially is at kid eye level.
To newsagents considering early returning this new title, I’d suggest you ask parents and 6 to 12 year olds.
In addition to promoting the Pink Ribbon magazine which comes free with The Australian Women’s Weekly this month, we are promoting this week’s Pink Ribbon issue of New Idea magazine. We also have the Hallmark boxed Christmas cards in-store raising funds for the Pink Robbin campaign too. So connecting all of this activity makes a lot of sense.
Drawing attention to these social issue related magazines connects our business with the campaign. This makes us more relevant than a supermarket which will typically do nothing special – unless they are paid to by the publisher.
We achieved a nice lift in sales over the weekend and into this week with the placement of Better Homes and Gardens and Diabetic Living at the counter next to newspapers. We aim to change the titles we have at the counter in this prime location at least twice a week, making the most of the different shoppers we see in-store. Newsagents who don’t do this should try. It will usually take a couple of months to learn which magazines perform well with newspapers.
The Australian newspaper yesterday preferred to take money from an advertiser than promote the top stories of the day. The wrap around advertisement was further evidence for newsagents that publishers do not think the front cover is all that important in selling the newspaper. I remember battles in years gone by about obstruction of the cover and the claim by publisher representatives that showing the cover, and the headlines, was vital to driving sales. Defaults were threatened if they were obstructed. Now, it seems, who cares?
I was saddened to hear this morning of the death of Gary Angus of newsXpress Pall Mall. Losing any newsagent is sad, losing someone at their workplace is even more so.
Gary was a genuine character in the newsagency channel as well as in Bendigo, a loveable larrakin some might say. He was a great supporter of our channel and key suppliers. Gary will be sadly missed.
I was talking with a newsagent last week who was keen for a bill payment option for newsagents even after the financial collapse some years ago of Bill Express. I was surprised as I have considered that over the counter bill payment is dead, not only in newsagencies but everywhere. Sure there are some who prefer to pay bills in cash but that number is declining from what I understand talking to people within Australia Post.
The infrastructure cost, not IT wise but cash handling wise, is too expensive for there to be any money to be made even if there was upside from a customer interest perspective.
The cost and infrastructure issues aside, as a retailer I question the cost to the business of the disruption of a bill payment transaction compared to the traditional newsagency transaction.
Newsagents hanging on to the possibility of a bill payment solution need to let go. Some still hang on to the promises made by a newsagency software company in the 1990s about their bill payment solution and their million dollar data centre. Smoke and mirrors as I said at the time.
Hmm … now that I have written this I bet there is an announcement showing I am wrong. If this happens so be it.
I noticed this ad on a business news website last week, pomoting an App being launched for Simply Knitting magazine in the US via the new Apple Newsstand facility. The latest developments from Apple in this space are certain to lure more publishers into pursuing subscribers through digital platforms.
I hope that newsagents are noticing these moves and are ensuring that their businesses are appropriately flexible.
We are featuring Prevention magazine with this in-location display in our new women’s magazine aisle. We will usually maintain this double pocket allocation for the first two weeks, less if sales mean we don’t have enough stock for it.
We are careful with these in-location displays, ensuring that we only have one up in each space at any one time. They continue to perform as well as or better than an aisle end display. I think this is because they are closer to the destination of shoppers, where they actually start to look at what they are visiting for.
Since the Prevention moved to a full size format a while back it has been easier to display in more traditional magazine fixturing.
Where possible this year we are promoting branded 2012 diaries with their companion magazine. While this will be a challenge the closer we get to Christmas, we have the space for it at the moment.
Girlfriend magazine and the Girlfriend 2012 Diary next to each other (see photo) offers a better chance of selling both. They are in an eye-level position … prime space.
We are also reminding our team members that diaries make an excellent Christmas gift. For example, the Girlfriend 2012 Diary is an ideal gift to the Girlfriend reader.
Talking about diaries, current indications are that there is no slowdown in diary sales, the plethora of mobile devices with diary facilities is not diluting the need for or interest in a hard copy diary.
Adelaide Now has a story on concerns held by newsagents about the possible privatisation of SA Lotteries. It is good to see the ANF agitating the state government on this issue which is close to newsagent’s hearts.
Newsagents need to agitate on this issue and indeed every issue which challenges their model. Our businesses are finely balanced, which each part of the business relying on the other parts for support.
A couple of friends shared with me their story of appalling customer service they recently experienced in a newsagency.
They had been in the shop for 10 minutes or so, selecting around $25 worth of stationery to purchase along with a magazine. On their way to the sales counter, the stopped at the newspaper stand and picked up a newspaper. They were from out of town and wanted to decide whether to purchase it. Less than 30 seconds after picking up the newspaper they were hassled by the newsagent. The rudeness of the approach resulted in them putting the newspaper down and purchasing only the items they had already selected.
While a newspaper purchase would not have added much to their basket, it may have got them enjoying a paper which they would buy again.
I doubt they will go back in the newsagency. Indeed, their story of what happened is likely to encourage others to not shop in this business.
There was no need for rudeness, especially given the value of what they were purchasing.
Some people should not own a newsagency. Customer service is just about all we have going for us. Bad word of mouth about one newsagency reflects badly on the whole channel, unfortunately.
We are promoting the latest issue of GQ magazine is a good location so that Taylor Lautner fans are more likely to see the title. besides the usual GQ shoppers, there may be a Twilight fan or two who picks up a copy – hence the placement showing off the full cover shot.
We are also looking for time at the counter for this issue of GQ. I can see it as something which would be purchase don impulse by the shopper who is a fan of Lautner.
We are always looking at magazine covers for opportunities like this.
We promoted the Steve Jobs cover story in the re-issue of Rolling Stone magazine with this behind the counter display at one of my newsagencies. The display looked stunning … there is no missing this as you enter the newsagency. Our goal was for the Rolling Stone story to be noticed by everyone who may possibly be interested in the story of the life and passing of Jobs. This counter display achieves that. It’s driving impulse business as well as good customer interaction.
We have been promoting the 10th anniversary issue of donna hay magazine with this simple yet visually effective aisle end display facing shoppers as they enter the newsagency and head toward our magazine department.
I love the white cover of this issue, its stands out beautifully against the colour of all other magazines in a typical newsagency magazine department.
In addition to the aisle end display we have this issue of donna hay in with our food titles. when the aide end display comes down we will give the issue support somewhere else in addition to the usual location. Being the anniversary issue warrants more than usual support from newsagents.