We have placed the latest issue of Delicious magazine so that the free block of Lindt chocolate which comes with the magazine can be easily seen.  This is the only way to handle such a valuable gift.  Newsagents and others who give this issue just one pocket because that ‘s what they always do are set to lose sales as a result.  This is a premium issue and it needs to be treated as such.  If we have stock left later this week we are planning on giving Delicious come counter time.

We are promoting the latest issue of Girlfriend magazine with a high-profile in-location display as it comes with a quality free gift on the cover.  The display has only been up a few days and already it is working, sales have been good.  I expect we will sell out of this issue.  the key is placement so that the gift can be easily seen by browsers.  This is where the more modern magazine fixturing gives newsagents better merchandising options compared too the our of date wooden magazine fixtures.

Our customers love Gardening Australia magazine so we make sure that it is easy to find when a new isssue comes out.  We give it space at the front of the gardening title section – so that the full cover can be seen.

I work on the principle that buyers of many monthly magazines rarely purchase every copy and that we as retailers have to help monthly titles.  We are able to display the full cover of 33% of all of our magazines.  We work hard to put titles in the spotlight which respond to this attention.  This means placement such that the full cover is easily seen – as is the case with the latest issue of Gardening Australia.  The photo shows exactly how the title looks in-store.

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.