Peel back the advertisement which covers half of the front page of The Age newspaper today and you see the words respect and remember – referring to the two year anniversary of the Victorian bushfires.
I hope that the marketing people at The Age are happy with their cover up of editorial coverage of what is still a difficult event for so many Victorians.
No surprise that Greg Hywood, the latest CEO at Fairfax, said on his appointment that print media businesses must adapt to the today’s conditions. Newspaper publishers started publicly saying this, in the context of technology driven disruption, six years ago, in February 2005 in coverage in Business Week magazine.
What Hywood has said equally applies to us newsagents. We must adapt if we are going to have a future. How we adapt will depend on our local circumstances. Plenty of newsagents are doing this already. Not enough however. More need to embrace new product categories to build a healthier overall margin.
Whereas in the past our channel has relied on suppliers for leadership, we have to find this within ourselves and the local, state and national levels. Newsagents have to create their (our) own future. Individually and collectively we must adapt … or die.
We have placed the I Love Magazines display unit at the entrance to each of my newsagencies. With the TV and other media coverage for this ACP Magazines campaign, there is no other place for the unit, to ensure that we leverage maximum potential. We are taking care over title placement and have trained our teams to ensure that the range is fresh and relevant throughout the consumer promotion.
Newsagents of every size ought to get behind this campaign. It’s a free kick for us, promoting our channel, offering prizes to our customers and helping us feel relevant in today’s marketplace.
The other reason newsagents need to get behind this campaign is because we should be able to say I Love Magazines ourselves. While this campaign focuses on a range of titles from ACP, the whole department can benefit from new eyeballs looking over the range.
Now would be a good time for newsagents to:
I urge every eligible newsagent to get behind I Love Magazines. make the most of this opportunity. Leverage the investment in promoting our channel to the fullest. If we all do this then we amplify the benefits.
We have placed the latest issue of Melbourne Kitchen + Bathroom Design next to the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens. We want to use the excellent high sales of the second title to drive browsing and sales of the first.
Nothing smart in that when you think about it … except that not enough newsagents use the real-estate on either side of their top selling titles to drive sales of the lower selling titles.
If you are thoughtful about your placement, you can achieve some excellent incremental business as we are finding with the latest issue of Melbourne Kitchen + Bathroom Design. It is a natural fit with Better Homes.
Newsagents who are growing magazine sales, yes there are some, are usually engaged in this type of thoughtful tactical placement.
We are fortunate to be among the newsagents who have received the excellent display unit for promoting Better Homes and Gardens. Pacific Magazines always gets these display units right. They are strong and easily assembled. I love that they can be used in a variety of locations without impacting on floor space too much. We will move the stand each week using it at the front of the store as well as other busy locations – some distance from where we have our Better Homes stock placed. This unit is about achieving incremental business.
Since the units are expensive, they cannot be sent to everyone. The best way to get this and other premium collateral is to go above and beyond for a title and to communicate with the publisher about this.
The interview I recorded with the ABC on Thursday will run as part of the Midday report on ABC1 at 12 noon today – it was held over on Friday due to the story from Egypt. We covered considerable ground in the interview which I hope hakes it to air. I express concern about the number of newsagencies closing, the inequity in the magazine distribution model which sees us disadvantaged over other ,magazine retailers and the success entrepreneurial newsagents are having in embracing change.
We are promoting the ACP I Love Magazines campaign with this coupon on customer receipts. The coupon / ad is being included on all receipts for the duration of the promotion -directly from our newsagency software. I love the campaign as it is designed to drive traffic to newsagencies. The campaign encourages consumers to indulge their passion for magazines. There are cash prizes for shoppers as well as for newsagents. It’s a terrific campaign to kick in now that the school year has started and we are all getting down to business. Kudos to ACP for running this promotion and for providing participating newsagents with such an excellent range of collateral.
Newsagents using the Tower Systems software can download the coupon for free from the user area of Tower website. Other newsagents who want to use the coupon should email me and I will send it to them.
Okay we have had a few days promoting the new Greek cookbook from ACP in several tactical ways. I blogged last week that I expected this new cookbook to sell well. It is. The counter approach is working particularly well, generating some good impulse business. You can see from the photo that one of my stores has it as their Magazine of the Week. This counter placement follows the principles outlined in my blog post yesterday – an un-cluttered counter with feature items given appropriate space and placement to shine. It’s nice weeing someone add this cookbook to their existing purchases when they reach the counter. It certainly says something about the value of what can be sold on impulse at a newsagency sales counter.
I’d encourage newsagents to give this title a go in tactical locations, in addition to placement with the ACP cookbook range.
Despite my whinge here about the size of the sports bag with the latest issue of GQ magazine, the creative team at one of my stores put up this excellent display.
The display looks terrific and draws your eyes as you enter the store.
I especially like that it is promoting a good value deal … better value than a magazine with a free cookbook which I see too often at the moment. Well done to the team members who created this display!
We continue to enjoy good success selling nail files at the counter of a couple of my newsagencies. Granted, these are cute looking fashion items, not your traditional nail file. They are an easy item to add to an existing purchase, often using up loose change. They are great for us in that they deliver a 50% margin. A nice add on to a newspaper or a magazine sale.
Too often newsagents clutter their counters with products which suppliers request be placed at the counter. Every item in such a prime location should be there because it is delivering the premium financial return befitting the premium nature of the space.
We give a new product a week. If there is sales movement, it stays. If there is no movement, it is either moved to a different counter location or elsewhere in the shop.
At the counter we have had tremendous success with: lip gloss, nail files, key rings, seasonal pens, novelty items, seasonal candy, branded stationery items being promoted in high rotation on TV and items which connect with news of the day – such as a shredder connecting with identity theft.
These are just some of the counter opportunities for newsagents. The keys are to have a crack … you will soon find what works for you. Don’t obsess about the ticket price. For example, something which sell for $1.00 and which has a 50% margin is great value if added to a newspaper sale. You are doubling your dollar margin (depending on your location and situation) for less than double the sale value.
Look at your counter from where your customer stands. Be critical about it. De-clutter – by taking EVERYTHING off and rebuilding.
Remember, you own the counter, you ought to control what is placed there.
Paid Content reports on Oprah Winfrey going nuts over the iPad on a show broadcast a couple of days ago in the US.
This is exactly what happened with the iPod. Early adopters were gen. Y, geeks and the like. Once mainstream people, the Oprah type audience connected, the new music distribution and play channel was established. A while after that, music producers got it. Then, some retailers got it.
Of course, the Oprah iPad hype is all staged and, I suspect, driven by big bucks from sponsors. However, so was the push of the iPod.
It doesn’t matter what newsagents think about the iPad, Oprah has blessed it again. We all know what her blessing of some novels did for their sales.
Advertising Age in the US is reporting a decline in US newsstand sales of magazines in the second half of last year.
Magazine subscriptions and overall audiences usually grow or at least hold up from year to year, but their continued newsstand weakness is worrisome because advertisers consider single-copy sales a gauge of consumer demand while publishers use newsstands to attract potential subscribers.
Then there is this interesting par about the channel:
Conde Nast, where newsstand sales decreased 10.3%, stressed as it has in the past that it is increasing cover prices and abandoning inefficient newsstand outlets in a successful bid to make its newsstand sales more profitable overall.
While our market magazine retail channels are different to the US and consumer engagement with magazines equally different, the latest newsagency sales benchmark study suggests we ended 2010 with some challenging numbers.
Newsagents can read this and worry or they can be proactive. There are plenty of proactive steps we can take in our businesses to show up and even grow magazine sales. While some of the steps we can take are challenges by poor decisions and damaging actions by magazine distributors, doing nothing will increase the pain from the decline.
The Monthly has a terrific cover this issue featuring the Queen. The whole cover need to be seen for it to work. This is one reason we have it located in a pocket above our newspapers. The other reason we have it in a high-traffic area is that we sell a lot of British magazines including Majesty and all the UK weeklies. This beautiful cover will appeal to some of those customers.
Newsagents will be interested in the latest issue of The Monthly for more than the article about the British royal family. Margaret Simons has an excellent article about about Fairfax. It’s a must-read for newsagents and those interested in publishing in Australia.
Gordon and Gotch is taking too long to introduce its Sales Based Replenishment model. Newsagents continue to get treated as warehouses and cash cows. Check out the Alan Baroushek’s Calorie, Fat & Carbohydrate Counter and The Pocket Food & Exercise Diary.
Both products have an on-sale of a year!
Rather than sending a single display unit based on sales history and topping up as we get close to selling our, Gordon and Gotch loaded us with too much stock. Taking up valuable retail space (or creating a storage problem) and sucking our cash long before they should.
Newsagents, the weakest link in the magazine distribution model are once again carrying more than their fare share of financial burden here. If the publisher wants to print enough stock to last a year they should carry the cost of warehousing and distributing that stock based on need. They have the data.
Supermarkets and some other retailers would not put up with this. They do not put up with this. Why do newsagents?
With 65% of magazines cash-flow negative, effectively losing money for us, we have the financial incentive to control our key asset, our retail network. All we lack are a plan and will. More fool us.
We are promoting the AFL Record Preview between our daily newspapers for a few days. There’s no other place for it than this tactical location … to get the maximum impulse potential from the title. Sales yesterday were good – as were all magazines sales.
It’s good that school holidays are over. Now we can get down to the regular habit-based business which is so vital to newsagencies.
The ABC is running an interview on their Midday Report news program on ABC1 today at noon on newsagencies, the GFC and magazines. I filmed an interview with them late yesterday. It is good to see mainstream media interested in the challenges and opportunities facing newsagents.
Not sure how much of what was discussed will make it to air – there was a good discussion about how newsagents are treated by suppliers compared to supermarkets and others and the challenges we face from the current supply model.
The latest newsagent sales benchmark study indicates that magazine unit sales in newsagencies dipped 5.5% in December 2010 compared to sales for December 2009. This decline is on the back of an even more significant decline in 2009 over 2008.
Special Interest, Craft and Hobbies, Adult, Computers and Women’s Weeklies were the main categories contributing to the decline.
Comparing the sales data for December with October through December, suggests a slowdown in December for magazine sales. The quarter long numbers are better.
While sales are declining, the accounts newsagents pay to magazine distributors are not. I have seen some newsagents paying more than 10% more for magazine stock now than compares to a year ago. This comparison is a total supply cost so it allows for the shifting of NDD titles to Network. Cover prices are not up 10% across the board.
If anything, there should have been a decline in magazine invoices, given the decline in sales. That is, as long as the magazine distributors do supply based on sales. There is evidence which indicates that they do not supply based on sales or an expectation of reasonable sales.
The benchmark data is from a group of more than 100 newsagencies with accurate business sales data. I’d love to see data for supermarkets and petrol and convenience for the same period.
I’ll have a more complete assessment of the sales benchmark data in a few days.
We run Gardening Australia and Burke’s Backyard magazine head to head and have done for ages. Over the last few months we have been taking more interest in the results as the two magazines have undergone changes – Gardening Australia first and Burke’s Backyard more recently.
In three of our newsagencies, Gardening Australia is winning. That said, the consistent display of the titles next to each helps achieve sales of both titles. They are a natural fit next to each other.
While I am no magazine design expert, Gardening Australia has a bit of a feel like the now closed Notebook magazine in that it goes beyond what you expect for its genre. Take their use of a chef for a cover shot for example. I think that i the gardening space shoppers are looking to read about diverse interests. I suspect that this is one of the reasons Better Homes and Gardens is so popular.
We are promoting Valentine’s Day behind the counter are one of my stores this week. This display is what customers see as they present to pay for their purchases. It’s a practical and attractive display promoting cards and some other Valentine’s Day items. Too often, cards are not part of gift and seasonal displays in stores. Yet it is greeting cards which deliver a superior margin. So, we have a good range of Valentine’s Day cards in our display behind the counter.
I bought in on the hype and went to iTunes to get The Daily, the new ipad newspaper from News Corp. Look what I got in response:
Groan. So I click on Change Store and it wants me to log in and then comes the message than I can only buy from the Australian store.
I would have thought that any organisation wanting maximum impact from a product like The Daily would understand that when it comes to digital content, the world is borderless. News Ltd newspapers here are reporting that they do not know when the daily will be available here.
Dumb.
Further to my post last month about Google magazine, the same publisher, Citrus Media, is behind a range of other titles offering equally questionable value. They publish Ultimate Guides for the Mac, iPod, iPhone and Apps as I understand it.
The model appears to be similar to the Google magazine – buy in content on the cheap (really cheap), freshen this up to look original and ship it out to newsagents with a sales forecast which unlocks cash for the publisher before newsagents have sold stock. yes, some publishers have an agreement with their magazine distributor which sees them paid a percentage of forecast sales immediately the title is distributed. Newsagent cash funds this.
Newsagents get the titles with a long shelf life and many do not early return, funding Citrus Media, paying them for the privilege of carrying what is in my opinion b-grade content which appears to have been created solely for the purpose of manipulating the newsagency magazine distribution model which can unlock cash flow for clever publishers.
I am told that you can assess the professional commitment of the publisher to original content by checking out the editorial team for each of their magazines. It’s the one editor for all titles.
I wish I had copies of the Ultimate Guide iPod magazines from recent years as I suspect that I would find that the latest edition recycles content from previous years with only limited new editorial content behind a fresh cover. Is it an Ultimate Guide if the content is from years ago?
The magazine distribuution model is open for anyone to access. Magazine distributors are the gatekeepers, our representatives controlling access to our channel and our cash.
On the basis of what is happening with the Ultimate Guides one has to wonder whether they are doing their job on behalf of newsagents.
There are reports out of the US overnight that Borders Group Inc. in the US is to close 150 stores and may file for bankruptcy protection. One only has to look at the extraordinary growth in sales of e-books (click on the image to see a large version of the graph) to understand the challenge for bricks and mortar booksellers. While there will always be a market for print books, the real growth based on current data is coming from the digital space.
FourFourTwo magazine is losing money for us. With a return rate of greater than 60%, we lose money once we account for labour and retail real-estate. The loss could be reduced if the magazine distributor took a more newsagent friendly approach to allocations. That we have a poor sell through without a fair allocation response shows that sell through is not important to the magazine distributor. Remember, they get paid to distribute and we get paid based solely on sales.
I wonder what happens with other retailers with which newsagents compete when titles do not perform to a reasonable level? Are they compensated? If they were, if newsagents were found to not have as good terms, newsagents would have every right to be angry and disappointed. Just wondering…
With Greek cooking so popular at the moment – on TV and in restaurants – The Australian Women’s Weekly Greek Cooking cookbook launched by ACP yesterday could well be a terrific success for us. We are going to promote this exactly the same way we successfully promoted the Slow Cooker cookbook – tactically. We will place stock on the flat with weeklies, every second week or so at the counter and every so often co-locate with newspapers.
Shoppers are unlikely to visit a newsagency looking for a Greek cookbook. This is why our engagement needs to leverage impulse opportunities. We sold close to 300 copies of Slow Cooker in one of my stores with the simple tactical campaign outlined above. I hope we have similar success with this Greek title.
We have two high priced AFL season 2011 products on sale from yesterday which should generate some nice impulse business. Given the size, price and nature of the products we have placed them next to newspapers. Since we are in Melbourne, we are more likely to get good business from newspaper customers than we would by placing the AFL Record Season Guide and AFL Prospectus with sports title – if they did fit. Both titles will be an interesting test for the outlook of shoppers. If AFL fans cut back on spending n these then I’d say that is an indicator of a very tough retail year ahead – kind of a groundhog indicator.