Author: Mark Fletcher

Zoo Weekly is a feature magazine with the ACP Connections program this week.  Based on our past experience at Forest Hill, we have gone for a promotional display next to our main newspaper stand.  This leads to a better sales lift than a power end display – especially since we are chasing the irregular Zoo consumer who is probably visiting to purchase a newspaper.  Also, we have had complaints from some of our older customers when we display Zoo on a power end.

Healthy Food magazine comes with a sample bag worth $10.00 which we are featuring at the counter of our newsagencies. There is no point in making this display too pretty as it is all about the bag and magazine. If the bag works like last year we will be out in a couple of days.

We found another space this morning for featuring a magazine we want to push.  We took an old acrylic display unit, freshened it up and have the display for Money from ACP Magazines you can see in the photo.  We will feature a different title each week.  We will select titles based on their suitability as an impulse item – something someone can see at the counter and say – I’ll take one of these too.  Money works this week because of the economic situation and the world banking news.  Next week it might be a sports magazine connected with football finals.  The keys are: topical; known brand; good value; easy decision.

I know that other retailers are paid a fee for locations such as this.  I am not them.  I’d rather have control over how I use this space as this enables me to best serve the needs of my customers.

We have created a display at our sales counter for Better Homes and Gardens this weekend to support the launch of the new Saturday morning radio show.  Thanks to this new radio initiative and the TV show on the Friday evening, Better Homes and Gardens generates excellent sales on the weekend.  A counter display, in our premium location, helps people to remember to buy the magazine when they have come in for a greeting card or a newspaper.  We also have BHG is its usual location with magazines as well as next to the weekly – for the first two weeks especially this co-location is essential to reaching full potential with this popular title.

The Worcester News in the UK has a story about magazine wholesalers and distributors getting together to provide a range of services and assistance to help newsagents increase magazine sales.  While only a trial at this stage, this does sound like a good initiative:

Steven Jones, COMAG retail development manager, said: “We will be focusing on 10 stores in Worcestershire and Herefordshire, giving them additional tools and an enhanced service package.

“This will include new racking, promotional material, gifts to give away with magazines, a category advice and field support.

“The aim of the trial is to support independent news-agents and help them to grow their sales of magazines against the declining market trend.

“Part of the trial will be advertising the retailer and their extensive magazine range to the community. We want to encourage consumers to visit these stores, which can supply any magazine through their local wholesale network.

I like the idea of advertising in local newspapers promoting the range of magazines in local newsagencies.

Better Homes and Gardens launches on radio this weekend in a tie-in show which supports the magazine. It will be on the Mix FM network in all state capital cities except Perth. The two-hour program, which will provide advice on topics such as gardening, DIY and pets, will be hosted by Johanna Griggs and Fast Ed from the show. This is a good opportunity to promote the brand and reinforces why we need Better Homes and Gardens on the counter for weekend sales. It is what we do and it results in excellent sales.

All of our magazine promotional spaces were allocated at our Frankston newsagency but the team wanted to give support to Madison with the free eye liner. As good retailers, they shuffled products and created a new display space at the counter, near the entrance to the shop. Another reason for giving Madison prominence this week is the media coverage from the finale of the TV show Project Runway. This new promotional location is near one of our two busiest registers – we are looking forward to how it works.

Last month we moved our ACP Magazines promotional stand to be next to our newspapers. We then created a display for Belle magazine on the back of the stand – all but one copy sold off the stand. Buoyed with that success, our team at Frankston has created a display for House & Garden for the back of the ACP promotional stand – there are two pockets from which customers can purchase the magazine off the stand – it is important that displays work for us, that purchase is easy.

The photo below shows how we use our top selling weekly magazines to drive sales of other categories. By reclaiming the top rows of the waterfall we are able to drive sales of parenting, house & garden, food, health and garden titles – all growing categories.

We are consistent in our placement – health with health, garden with garden etc. We know from our top-ups that these titles sell from here.

We call this our honey pot strategy because we are driving sales of less popular titles by placing them around our most popular titles.