Author: Mark Fletcher

This past Friday, Saturday and Sunday we have had Better Homes and Gardens and Australian iPhone placed between newspapers.  The BHG placement is easy – we do this every weekend and love the reward of sales from this location. I decided to place Australian iPhone here because of the free iPhone case with the magazine. It’s a freebie ideal to the target shopper.

Now that it’s Monday we will switch the titles here as we see a different shopper through the week. What we place here depends on a mid morning review of the new titles in and their covers.

InStyle magazine is hot, selling very well. In fact, we have ordered more sock to ensure we can satisfy our customers. The magazine looks terrific and the free gift of a Biore skincare product makes it even more appealing.

Our sales have been helped by an aisle end display on our busiest aisle end – facing shoppers as they enter.  Until we ran low we featured the magazine in a full face display in the usual location for InStyle.

Following a comment on this blog about Action + Adventure from EMG being bagged with other titles from the publisher I contacted EMG for feedback yesterday.  They responded in detail and I publish there response here for all to see and consider:

In the past newsagents commented about EMG using returns for value add. As you know EMG has stopped collecting returns since last year. Every value added magazine which goes with every new title is mint.

In the case of Action + Adventure that magazine is bagged with 4WD Action, 4WD Custom Guide, Camper Trailer Touring, 4WD Camping Guide, Modern Fishing, Modern Boating, Overlander, Saltwater Fishing and Fishing Tips. The print run for that magazine is some 190,000 copies with 20,000 distributed separately. The trial of 3 issues was to determine if there were buyers of just Action + Adventure but who did not wish to purchase any of our regular titles – as that title contains 4WD driving, camping, fishing, boating and trail biking.

In the short time Action + Adventure has been published it has been popular with readers and advertisers. We know many advertisers have achieved a good response as they have increased their advertising expenditure and this would not have happened if buyers were not reading it. I can see Brendan’s point that maybe it should not have been sold separately if it was being given away free. Then again how would we determine whether Action + Adventure has a following in its own right.

The strategy for Performance Garage is very similar and it goes with Street Commodores, Street Fords, Hot 4’s, Fast Fours, Performance Imports, Zoom, Extreme Performance and some motoring specials. Again, it is only a trial for three issues.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention and if you wish to do so you may post all or part of the above.

This is a good response, a direct explanation from the publisher about their strategy. I’m glad they are open to sharing this here and for the opportunity for newsagents to comment.

The display created by the team promoting the latest issue of Dolly magazine shows off the free skater skirt bagged with this issue. It also shows off the Justin Bieber feature with the magazine.

By displaying the front of the magazine folded out and there back page we are covering all marketing bases for this issue.

We have this display in-store, near the counter. It can be seen by shoppers team Ticketek. This is important as the target demographic for the magazine buys plenty of concert tickets.

I love the display created by the team at one of my newsagencies for promoting the latest issue of Cleo magazine. It connects with the tone of this issue and brings to the fore the free gift which comes with the magazine. I especially like the work they have done to feature the gift.

Click on the image to get the detail of their work.

This display faces shoppers as they need to the magazine aisle.

Sales of Zoo magazine have been stronger than usual this week and I put this down to the different look – the different colours in the cover design make it more noticeable – and the news stories and commentary around the cover shot of Olympian Lauryn Mark posing with a gun. I’d be interested to hear if others have experienced an uplift in sales. I hope so. I like people purchasing a title they don’t purchase regularly.

Newsagents need to get the latest issue of Your Investment Property magazine into the spotlight. The cover of this issue is visually stunning, delivering excellent visual cut through in the colourful magazine displays.  It’s also a number issue featuring the top 100 suburbs.

We have it in the best location with property titles. We also have it above newspapers from now to the end of the weekend when we will assess what we do next to promote this issue.

We are promoting the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine with a column display facing shoppers as they enter the business. The display is not cluttered not is there much nearby competing for eyeballs.

This display is in addition to prominent placement in the usual location for the title and an over the weekend placement between our two top selling newspapers.

This promotional activity is usual for us in the first and second week of the on sale. Usual because it works a treat … driving excellent results.

We are promoting both Men’s Health and Women’s Health with our newspapers at one of my newsagencies with this simple display.

Sometimes all you need to do is get a product in front of people for it to be purchased on impulse. That’s the objective of this display.

We could have gone with something leveraging excellent VM skills. The display may have got in the way of the practical (and successful) placement.

The team at one of my newsagencies have created a terrific display for the new partwork: Quilting Made Easy. This is at the front of the business, facing into the mall.

Why give over such premium space?  Easy. This partwork is on TV. People will recall the TV ad when they walk past, step inside, purchase the partwork and most likely purchase something else. How do I know? The data tells me so. Partworks are excellent for attracting shoppers and the ,majority of these shoppers purchase other items.

Win.

We have been promoting the latest issue of Home Beautiful magazine with this aisle end display. This is a title which floats under the radar somewhat yet continues to deliver valuable sales, especially when we give it a shot in the spotlight like with this display.

After a week, the aisle-end display is down and the title is a featured title in with home and living titles. Home and living is a serious growth category for us – double digit growth over the Apr-Jun quarter last year. We track this data obsessively as it guide display decisions.