Month: August 2012

US magazine sales fell 10% in the sin months to June 30, 2012.  Businessweek reports:

The Audit Bureau of Circulations said Tuesday that overall circulation, including subscriptions, was just about flat from a year earlier. But single-copy sales, which are more closely watched — because publishers make more money from them— continued to fall. Subscriptions are typically sold at a discount so publishers can increase their circulation and attract advertisers.

The industry group said that single-copy sales at newsstands and other retailers totaled 26.4 million in the first six months of 2012. That’s down from 29.1 million in the same period last year.

Check out the media decoder blog at The New York Times on this … fascinating.

Our magazine model is quite different here with over the counter sales accounting for a greater proportion of overall sales.

While we talk about digital and generational change having an impact on magazine sales, the products themselves have an impact. This is especially true in the mass market. For example, Weight Watchers in the US (325,000 monthly sales) lost 28% of sales. The question has to be – is this indicative of  a problem with the product itself.

Publishers need to look at this for every title reporting sales decline. They have to ask whether they are putting out the best product possible.

We are promoting the Dora the Explorer Little Cooks Collection partwork right at the front of the newsagency, to connect with shoppers in the centre.  We also have some stock in the body of the store.

We have taken the opportunity to promote Dora plush with the partwork product … no harm in chasing an extra sale and showing our business as offering added value to the Dora fan.

With a massive TV campaign starting yesterday, the opportunity for newsagents with this partwork is excellent. Now is the time for a prime position display.

Core to the partwork offer is the putaway opportunity. This is where newsagents beat supermarkets and why supermarkets should not be used by publishers for selling partworks.

We have promoting the new Diabetic Living cookbook with this display on one of the columns facing the front of the business.  Diabetic Living is a popular brand for us.

I expect this cookbook to sell well – hence the prime location placement.

We also have the title located with our diabetic magazines, including Diabetic Living, as well as with our regular cookbook titles.

We are also promoting the title in an email campaign to shoppers this week as part of our external marketing.

Check out the display promoting crossword titles created by the team at one of my stores.  Using the black and white crossword wallpaper, the titles themselves really stand out.

We specifically chose to feature titles connected with popular magazine mastheads.

The crossword section is immediately behind this display – hence our selection of this location.

If you want to see the display in more detail, click on the image.

We are promoting the latest issue of Grand Designs Australia with this display on the aisle-end, facing the front of the shop. With the launch issue selling so well for us we want to try and do even better with issue #2.

In addition to this display we have Grand Designs Australia featured in our home and living section of the magazine department.

The Grand Designs TV show continues to perform well, providing excellent brand support for the magazine.  The TV tie in is a reason we’ll keep the feature display up for two weeks.

We are promoting the latest issue of Home Beautiful magazine with this display in-store – located on a column facing shoppers as they enter to grab impulse purchases.

While not a massive seller, Home Beautiful responds to feature support – like this type of display. We are also supporting the title in its usual location with home and living titles – with a half waterfall.

Our in-store creative team played with the collateral and created something a bit different for us with this display. I like it.

We are supporting the latest issue of Cosmopolitan magazine with this feature display and a waterfall in the usual location for the title.

We also have Cosmopolitan in an impulse display unit at the front of the business, facing into the shopping mall.

We’ll maintain the three positions for this week and pull back to two during the weekend given time pressure. This aisle end display will be replaced.

On the weekend we experimented with a different entrance to our magazine department. While it may not look like much in the photo, in store the change was significant.

I was keen for the change for the sake of change itself.

Magazine departments look the same around Australia. By placing the units at the front of each aisle on an angle I was trying to get customers looking at the department differently and noticing the feature titles in the front units more than usual.

While the move made it harder for older customers and those with movement challenges to enter the magazine aisles, there is no doubt that the more people saw the titles in the front units – placed on the angle.

Another reason for the change was for us to look at the magazine department differently.  We are planning on some major shop floor changes and we want to take a fresh approach to some core departments. Central to the changes is the need for us to break from traditional in several areas, to reflect the fundamental changes occurring in retail.

I am leaving up to the weekday team to decide whether they keep this change in place, move to something else or switch back. Since I am not there every day it’s not fair to force on them a change which be a challenge to a reasonable group of our customers.

Another of my stores is promoting the VTAC guide at the counter. Since shoppers don’t come in looking for the title we figured we needed to place it where they could easily add it to the purchase. Our plan is to give it two weeks here and in this time move a chunk of the stock we have received. We have achieved a 28% sell through in the last week.  As I noted previously, the guide looks good this year, visually attractive.

We’ve placed a simple magazine impulse unit next to our copier. Right now we are promoting the latest issue of Women’s Health in this location.

With around 80% of copies in a typical newsagency being copying alone in the sale, we need to do more to drive efficiency from this service.  We will try a few titles in this location and see what works best.

This weekend we have been promoting Better Homes and Gardens as well as the latest Donna Hay with newspapers. We look at what is with newspapers three times a week: Monday, Wednesday and Saturday (sometimes Friday). The goal is to make newspaper shoppers more valuable with impulse purchases.

The hot topic for many involved in magazine publishing in Australia yesterday was the report that European magazine publisher Bauer was in negotiations to purchase ACP Magazines.

Several newsagents I spoke with during the day wanted to talk about what such an acquisition might mean.

The way I see it, ACP being sold to Bauer or some other established publishing business could be good for the company and magazine publishing generally. Good competition fosters good competition and this results in better products.

Magazines live or die by the value those reading them discover in their pages. A publisher purchasing ACP will help it deliver better products. A private equity player purchasing ACP is less likely to focus on driving value through content – in my view.

Newsagents can only sit and watch what happens with ACP with more than passing interest from the sidelines.

Check out a recent blog post by Colin Morrison, former ACP Chief Executive now based in Britain, about the challenges the company faces.

We received these Scooby Doo titles last week and wondered about their relevance to us.  Four titles, two copies each in a segment which is challenged in all but the top selling titles. I’d feel better about the titles if they were part of a broader Scooby Doo story, something I could build something more meaningful around. I am looking more and more for this, opportunities to take a title beyond a pocket and drive interest by retailers elsewhere in the business.