Coles Express is promoting half price Bauer Media magazines: Woman’s Day, OK!, NW and The Australian Women’s Weekly.
This extraordinary deal is available with any fuel purchase, yes, any fuel purchase. The AIP says retailers make around 5% on fuel sales so they can’t be funding this deal.
While I understand there is a difference between the magazine shopper in a newsagency and someone buying a magazine, this type of promotion encourages shoppers to expect to purchase magazines at half price. I say this because the campaign is running for two months. People purchase fuel, say, weekly. This campaign has the right triggers and is running long enough to educate the weekly magazine shopper to switch from their current retailer to the Coles Express outlet.
I think the only way to see this campaign is to drive people to choose Coles express for their weekly magazine purchase. Sure, there will be some incremental business – but I doubt this will amount to much.
Weekly magazine shoppers are not as loyal as they were – because of price games like these,
I’d love someone from magazine publishing or distribution to tell me that I am wrong, that this two month long half price campaign for the Bauer titles is not designed to change shopper behaviour like I suspect it is.
This supermarket chain campaign is the type of campaign I hate to see. It makes us look expensive. Hell, we are expensive when we charge double for these participating Bauer titles. Where is the sense in that?
Based on a network size of 650 stores and considering the titles involved, allowing for conservative sales numbers, I’d expect this campaign to have a cost of at least $15,000 a week in terms of what is being given away. Whoever is funding this must be expecting a return on this investment for the titles being promoted.
With newsagents selling close to 50% of all magazines sold in Australia, why run a campaign that makes them look expensive compared to Coles?
Would Bauer fund a campaign like this in newsagencies? If they want us to grow magazine sales they would as they would want us to be seen as competitive.
My supermarket contacts say they expect Coles Express will make full margin on all titles if this campaign is run in the same way other magazine campaigns are run. That would make it an expensive for whoever is funding the campaign. I would love to see that level of investment made in selling these magazines in newsagencies.
What do others think?
