A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Month: August 2016

It is important newsagents and lottery retailers understand the Lottoland pitch

It is important for lottery retailers to understand the Lottoland operation, in case they are asked. You need to be able to tell comment if people raise it with you. The key response I think is with Lottoland you don’t buy a ticket in the lottery. No, you place a bet.

From the Lottoland website is this explanation of lotto betting.

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You have to dig further for more information.

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I searched the site for Payout Rules but could not find the section. It could be they mean the explanation for each game, but it is not obvious.

In my search for a better understanding of Lottoland, I found a forum with more information. Please don’t take my linking to the forum of any endorsement of their analysis and opinion.

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Competition

Lottoland ignores small business newsagents

Lottoland has ignored me and other newsagents who have complained about the recent ignorant and unreasonable depiction of newsagents in their currently-playing TV commercial. As I wrote here last week, the ad includes an unfair, disparaging even, depiction of a newsagent. They set this up by placing the ad inside what looks like an old-style newsagency, something Australians will recognise.

I have Tweeted Lottoland as have other newsagents. With no response. It seems to me the company does not care about how it depicts its competition.

in my view, the Lottoland ad represents a misrepresentation in advertising, which is likely to cause damage to the business or goodwill of the competitor -= newsagents. Here I am using a definition from the Misleading and Deceptive Advertising page of the Advertising Standards Australia website, a site on which we cal rely to consider the ethics and standards of advertising.

I’d love to see a mainstream media outlet pick up this story and the appalling, in my opinion, of newsagents by Lottoland. I’d also like them look at what Lottoland is actually selling.

Maybe Tatts could help fund newsagents to take action on this.

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Ethics

Newsagent engagement with Olympic Pin promotion

I have received photos from several newsagents of their support for the Pacific Magazines newsagent exclusive Olympic Pins promotion. Here are three photos from different businesses showing engagement. I am posting them here to show others how some newsagents are supporting the exclusive opportunity.

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magazines

Reminded of the 2008 newsagent TVC

In 2008 I funded a TV commercial promoting newsagents. It ran nationally for two weeks on Foxtel and a mix of regional channels. I also sent DVDs to newsagents to play on screens in-store. The commercial was supported at the time with full page ads in a couple of newspapers and magazines – publishers supporting the channel.

I heard from a newsagent overnight who asked for a copy as the DVD they used in-store was damaged. I was surprised people still used it so I dived into my trove and dug it out. As a reminder, here it is:

#proud.

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newsagency marketing

The WH Smith newsagent proposition in the UK

With WH Smith growing their presence in Australia in the last year through their acquisition of Supanews, Wild and Kennys Cardiology, I found it interesting to compare their current UK retail offering with what we see in Australia.

I visited several WH Smith High Street stores last week plus several transit locations. While store sizes and product range differs, there is a consistency in look and feel.

Common among the stores is the focus on what mass retailers call value – 2 for, 3 for 2 and similar.

While the WH Smith stores are neat, consistent in layout and not bad looking, they feel out of date to me but I’m not the shopper.

Here are photos from the Manchester Arnddale Centre store:

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Newsagency management

Newsagents can learn from publisher actions

Fairfax has cleaned up its balance sheet with a billion-dollar write-down announced today. This financial clean-up is something newsagents could take as a guide to cleaning up the newsagency in terms of space allocation to print, space allocation to dead stock generally and the management time commitment to slowing and dying product categories.

To me, that is the focus of today’s Fairfax story – what we should be doing in our businesses in a similarly future-focused mission.

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Media disruption

How newsagents can make the most of the Olympic Pin opportunity

MKMU_82347_Olympic-Pin_B2B-Right now, today, newsagents have the opportunity to show how much they appreciate exclusivity. Because, starting today, we have it. It is 100% up to us whether we get such an opportunity again.

The Official Olympic Pins supported by Pacific Magazines titles New Idea, Who and That’s Life are exclusive to our channel. If we do this well we can expect more exclusive opportunities. If we do this poorly, this will be the last such opportunity.

So, how will we do?

Unfortunately, as with any chain, we are only as good as our weakest link. We owe it to each other to haul into line any newsagent letting us down. There is no excuse.

Here are my tips for making the most of the opportunity.

  1. Understand the product: these are limited-edition pins, collectible, their purchase supports the development of Australian Sport through the efforts of the Australian Olympic Committee.
  2. Wear a pin in-store.
  3. Talk about each pin on Facebook in a series of separate posts over several days. Pace yourself.
  4. Email your customers to promote the pins.
  5. Offer the pins at the counter to shoppers buying the supporting magazines.
  6. Make sure the titles, New Idea, Who and That’s Life are in the best position in your magazine display.
  7. Co-locate New Idea, Who and That’s Life at the counter for the first two days of on-sale.

The goal has to be for this campaign to be an extraordinary success, so much so that Pacific does more newsagent exclusives in the future and so much so that other suppliers do as well.

How this goes is up to us. I have seen all the pins. They look terrific, well worth the $1 spend. The fund-raising cause is strong, people love the Olympics.

I hope all the newsagency marketing groups are 100% behind this newsagency channel exclusive. I know newsXpress is. Here is one Facebook sponsored post newsXpress pitched to 20,000+ people. This is one of several engagements leading up to today’s launch:

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magazines

Promoting the Australian Olympic Pins on receipts

Olympic Pin_Tower_480x384-OnsaleHere is an image provided by Pacific Magazines that newsagents can auto-serve on customer receipts to promote the newsagency channel exclusive Official Australian Olympic Pin Collection and the supporting titles: New Idea, Who and That’s Life.

The receipt a valuable marketing platform for communicating opportunities like this.

I encourage all newsagents with software offering the ad-serve facility to use it.

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magazines