Further to my post yesterday, here is how I am choosing to use this premium space at the moment.

Bliss Victoria is a title which responds to placement away from its usual location.

Our Real Living sales are up thanks to placement here above the weeklies.

We start each week with a seven pocket waterfall for weeklies – leaving the top two pockets for other titles.  As the week progresses we shrink the waterfall and bring other titles in, titles we choose.

By yesterday morning we had sold out of Philosophy Now magazine.  Our usual sell through is between 25% and 50%.  Our tactical placement of the title with newspapers last Monday is what created the opportunity for the sell-out.  The brilliant cover is what drove the impulse purchases.

We have opportunities like this every day in our newsagencies. It is vitally important to our health that we work tactically on extending a shopping basket with just a newspaper to a newspaper and something else.

The Julia Gillard cover on Who magazine, out yesterday, encouraged us to create a display at the prime impulse location between our two busiest sales counters.

My assessment is that in the right impulse location, the cover is likely to achieve incremental business for us.  hence the use of prime space for the small display.

In terms of the display itself, we have followed our usual simple approach for these things: creating only a couple of layers, nothing too fancy and letting the product speak for itself.  The display is not bordered by other products – it has a clear spotlight.

This counter location is succesful for around 75% of our placements.  I am happy with that strike rate.

Our tactical placement of Philosophy Now with newspapers on Monday is working well.  In five days we have matched our usual sales for the total on-sale.  I’d expect us to sell out before the next issue comes out.  The Is God Really Dead? cover is the reason – you can see people notice it when they go to pick up a newspaper.

We are taking the opportunity to promote the latest issue of The Week magazine with Julia Gillard on the cover on our main newspaper stand for the next few days.  The cover is excellent and with the new PM in a honeymoon period it should achieve some extra business for us.  We have two perspex pockets on our newspaper stand, one above The Age and one above the Herald Sun, for tactical title placement.  Our goal is to turn newspaper sales into newspaper + magazine sales.  With the right title they work very well for us.

We are promoting the latest issue of Australian Women’s Weekly at the busiest point of our sales counter.

I chose the counter location because of the Julia Gillard profile which comes with the magazine – I expect it to sell well.

While we may lose some impulse business for the regular mix of ACP titles which would usually be in this display unit, the change will be noticed by regulars who have probably become store blind to the same old layout for the last couple of years.

The counter display is in addition to an in-location display.  It is already driving good impulse business.

School holidays bring plenty of new customers to any shopping centre.  We are no different and while we have some great holiday deals on our dance floor, I decided to promote the latest issue of Better Homes & Gardens along with Better Basics out the front of the store for the next few days.  My reasoning is that we will see more mums shopping in the holidays who would usually be at work.  These are the people we want seeing the titles.