Another change from our recent magazine relay in the placement of our ACP cookbooks. We have increased the space allocation in an effort to drive sales of all formats. We have the new titles co-located with food titles in the women’s magazine aisle and the full range as shown below in another aisle.

You can see that we are giving the mini cookbooks equal space with the regular size titles. This is designed to lift sales of the mini cookbooks.

We will continue to treat launch titles differently with placement in impulse units at the front of the newsagency.

While we would have preferred to fit the full cookbook range in our women’s magazine aisle, this was not possible if we were to maintain a professional display of magazines.

By placing certain magazine categories next to each other in our businesses we are able to drive sales of both. Take wedding and hair – they sit naturally next to each other yet I have seen newsagencies where they are some distance apart.

By considering and managing magazine adjacencies newsagents are able to drive sales efficiency from the department and bank more margin dollars from magazine sales.

We have been promoting the latest issue of Weight Watcher’s magazine in the usual location with women’s health titles as well as this impulse location placement at the front of the magazine department.  Every time we bring this title out from itss usual location we achieve incremental sales – I’d encourage other newsagents to try this.  the sales are there.  it’s a matter of the cover being seen by someone at the right point in their consideration of weight related matters.    It’s an easy impulse purchase because of the trust in the brand.  In addition to this placement with weeklies we also give it a run with newspapers when space and time permit.

It was good to see Women’s Health Bump go on sale yesterday.  We are supporting the title with a good display with pregnancy titles as well as a feature display at the counter.  Pregnancy magazines are due for a shake up and the arrival of Bump should achieve this.  The first issue looks terrific.

I have just heard from ACP that Cleo tomorrow will be a split delivery. 45% allocation will be sent tomorrow and 55% on Friday due to production delays.

We have been promoting Simply Salads as we do every new ACP cookbook, by placing some stock next to our daily newspapers.  While we also display all new titles in our cookbook section, it is this tacttical placement with newspapers which generates the best response.  Newsagents have an excellent opportunity with these cookbooks as they are released to us weeks ahead of them being placed in supermarkets.