Publishing Woman’s Day three days early to leverage the exclusive Shane Warne / Liz Hurley has not worked for me. We have sold a couple of extra copies over Friday and Saturday. We have supported the title with excellent placement with our weeklies as well as placement at our busiest counter position to leverage impulse purchase opportunities – that support will continue today.
If my experience plays across all retailers, ACP will certainly be unhappy at the performance of their considerable investment.
Covers for weekly magazines are a challenge at the best of times. That challenge is magnified when you go out early and take on the additional costs associated with that.
My feeling is that Australian’s don’t care about Shane Warne and Liz Hurley. Customers often comment on covers – to us and to each bother. I’ve not heard it with this cover.
If I was the publisher of one of the weeklies this week I would have gone out early with a special: One Direction down under, a photo special of their tour of Australia. If this had come out Friday under the Woman’s Day or New Idea mastheads I am certain I could have sold between 100 and 200 copies over the last two days and ended with a 30% or more sales increase on regular issues of the title. Yes, you may think that 1D is not necessarily on the radar of the typical reader of either title. Sales are sales. Right now, and I’m not sure for how long, they can sell anything.
We normally get a few enquiries about special magazines that are on sale Fridays in capital cities, but with WD have received no comments or interest at all.
Our allocation was increased 17% and 18 % of that allocation sold Friday and Saturday. Not huge but if this translates to increased sales for the issue of 18-20% then I’d say it worked for us.
I won’t be pushing WD tomorrow when we
finally get our stock even though I couldn’t
care less about the cover story (and neither will my customers).
It is the ingratitude of the publishers/distributors that I am concerned about. Why let some newsagents have the opportunity and not
others aka lD as well.
SA lags behind in this area and it is not good enough.
I will push New Idea tomorrow and WD can
languish (it usually has front counter prominence).
It is the only way to hit back at the sort of
provocative behaviour that we see all the time from the companies.
I hope other newsagents agree with me?
i dont think the early issue was anything to do with the content.
AWW was pushed for delivery today (monday) because wednesday is Anzac day.
i think they were just avoiding delivering WD and AWW on the same day?
the customer feed back that i have had is negative towards content.
when we did the coles shop last night, they still had the old WD on the shelf….. no warnie there?
Fair enough I’m in a blokey area (although my women’s mags are finally picking up), but I had all of 2 comments (and no sales) on my display with newspapers. First was a serious guffaw followed by ‘Warnie?!?!?!’ and more laughter. The second was something along the lines of ‘oh it’s warnie and our new adopted citizen liz’ (implied whoopdeedoo). I guess at least the display was noticed. :/
Have definately sold a few more due to the occassional Saturday and Sunday morning customers, who we may not see on a Monday, buying a copy.
I don’t think the cover has drawn extra sales , just the release timing. Many of my customers, both male and female, have quite happily mocked Warnie, his new bride to be and his plastic complexion and hair !
We have a most unfortunate situation, our co tenant Woolworths did not receive their magazines today, I’m heartbroken!
FYI, this blog post was mentioned in the Heckler section of the Sunday Age today, under the heading “Shane and Liz fail to excite anyone”
Thanks Reg. In Hong Kong and had not seen The Age.