It seems that everywhere we turn these days capital city newspapers are free. Gyms, sports events, cafes and now 7-Eleven.
It is an unfortunate consequence of newspaper publishing today and the competition among retail channels selling newspapers that the product itself is being devalued in many ways.
7-Eleven this week in Victoria has been giving a copy of the Herald Sun away with every fuel purchase over $2.00. I know of one customer who was given the free paper without asking. he was not in the market for a paper and not looking to read the paper. Yet the free paper thrust into his hand will count as a copy sold for the purposes of the audit.
It’s not as if the Herald Sun is expensive. In my view it’s underpriced by at least fifty cents.
It’s the non newsagency outlets where the freebies are offered: cafes, convenience stores and petrol outlets. these businesses are mroe likely to see the newspaper as something to giveaway – of less value than the cover price.
It’s newsagents where we charge full price, respect the value of the product and support the product in ways designed to drive full value (for the publisher and for advertisers) sales. We love the product for itself and not for being something to thrust to a petrol customer without asking.
I wish deals like the 7-Eleven one were not being done and that newspapers were priced the same everywhere. It won’t happen, I know … not now.
Newspapers have not increased in price much for so long that it seems that cover price is pretty much irrelevant to publishers in terms of revenue generation, so why not free.
100% correct there Mark.
You couldn’t have put it any better!
We have cookbooks up here that are $2 with a $1 DT. newsagents were faxed saying we had to collect tokens or we may have our credits refused.
Coped a mouthful the other day as I wouldn’t and couldn’t ( she didn’t have tokens and hadn’t bought future papers) sell her the next weeks cookbooks. because you could buy the next weeks cookbooks at our local COLES up the street.
Why aren’t they held to the same promotional scrutiny the poor old Newsagent is.
I emailed my Nationwide Rep but have not had a reply.
Nikki
Our closest Woolies is 28k away yet we still get people coming in asking for cook books as the supermarket have run out but they bought a tele anyway. Woolies gave out last Tuesdays book on Monday so they dont care. No tokens collected.
These promos are designed to get people through your doors and boost Tele sales but how can they boost a newsagents sales when Woolies/Coles disregard the rules.
Dont expect a suitable reply from News as they dont care and would not challenge the supermarkets on tokens etc as they are major advertises with News through their various companies.
I know Greg, but all I continually ask for in the business world – against these monopolies like coles and woolies is an EQUAL playing field..
Is it time for us to charge the newspaper publishers a monthly fee for space give away papers free ourselves????
We get a fee whether or not papers are sold, no returns and no bills from the publishers, we would probably increase traffic flow and providing a commercial rate for space was paid this may be a win for retail newsagents. Distributors would still be paid for dropping papers off to us but there be no need to performs returns at any level thus providing large cost saving across the board. Makes sense to me, does any one else think something along these lines might work? The secret is to obtain a fair return for space provided for papers.
Nice one Brendan, The last paragraph sealed it for me.
711 in my area have delivered by me about 20-30 Tele M-S and sell from 10 to 15 ish on most days.
With the Promo that is running for the fuel and tele they now have delivered 287 M-S and return from 250-150.
I struggle to have enough Tele deliveries to service the 9 subs as it is and an increase is out of the question well that was from the 2nd Rep that has now left them.
I will have to make a call on my deliveries soon.
Brett, we regularly run out of papers in our retail shop and our newsagent (we have sold our round) now has 11 rounds
and can NEVER get enough papers. I was
stressing about it for months but I have now decided that papers are not an important part of my mix in the shop – they are simply one small component.
When I run out now, I just think – “good,
that is less returns for me to handle”.
The above is not the newsagents’ fault either – he is being sent a finite amount of
papers to distribute and he is doing the best he can.
I am probably down about 25% on what I
could sell potentially but the newspaper companies don’t care about that any more. They are into cost cutting and free
distribution to hold up their advertising “rivers of gold” which have now
become “creeks of bronze” (to quote an olympian expression).
Our saving grace will be diversification – not papers and probably not magazines although mine are holding up quite well at
present.
Stop stressing – it is unhealthy!
I have to admit that I have never been so
happy as I’ve been since we sold our distribution rounds. Retail is a piece of cake compared with distribution and the
dist. guys are really doing it tough now.
Great suggestion from Brendan. Seems like a winner for everybody involved. Customer gets a free paper. Publisher gets paper out to a wider audience. Retailer simply needs to be paid an adequate fee. Here lies the catch.
Mmmm read some of the comments above regarding Brendan’s suggestion of putting free mags in newsagents direct from publisher. It would be interesting to hear ideas about how much to ask for in return and if this would really work. It could add value to customers plus no mucking about with returns etc. Might have issues with bigger mag publishers and distributors e.g. Gotch though??
Free Melbourne Age at pay station at Queenscliff ferry terminal nicely folded in plastic.
Asked did local newsagent supply these newspapers and was told that the Age supplys them to increase their circulation numbers.
Maybe the Age could pay 12.5% to the local newsagent for this generous offer!