We are promoting the latest issue of Cleo at the counter this week. The free dress packaged with the magazine is an excellent giveaway and certain to drive good business. We only received one poster so we created our own marketing collateral to help drive sales of this special deal. We will leave Cleo in the prime position and reassess on Wednesday.
We are promoting the latest issue of Time magazine in an acrylic unit which sits above The Age in our main newspaper stand. The image for the Haiti cover story is most compelling. It is a good example of when we need to get the full cover of the magazine on show to drive sales – as awful as that sounds in this situation.
CNET is reporting that an industry analyst has said the production of the new Apple tablet is in full swing. Many are expecting this new device from Apple to be the game changer in the reading device space.
I get a laugh when a customer, standing at the counter, says they can’ see the ESE-2C calendars and they are right in front of them. These calendars are a great seller, year in and year out – even if they get hard to find from time to time. Of course, when we point to the calendars we usually get a good laugh.
Our January customer newsletter – on display out the front of our newsagency – is promoting back to school, great ink deals, our card range and three sets of branded product deals.
The newsletter evolved considerably over the last year. It’s current form is more outcome focused. This allows us to use it in a wider variety of ways to promote the business.
We now start to plan content for each newsletter three weeks out, considering other promotions on at the time and ensuring that we have it produced and ready to go out on the first day of the month.
The Sunday Herald Sun weighs 1kg today. If the copies home-delivered have the same weight then they breach acceptable OH&S standards. These were first published in a report by David Nery in 2006 into the OH&S issues surrounding newspaper delivery. The report recommended a maximum weight for a wrapped newspaper to be .6kg and at their weight 200 to 300 newspapers delivered per day per person.
Our team at Forest Hill has setup a small display promoting Australia Day at the aisle end in our card department which is nearest our main newspaper stand – i.e. great traffic location. (Click on the photo to see a larger version.) We will add magazines to the display which feature Australia Day on the cover as well as newspapers on the day. I have seen plenty newsagents do a great job promoting and connecting with Australia Day – it is part of a good community connection.
The masthead of The Age newspaper was partially obscured again yesterday by a post-it type ad stuck on promoting newspaper home delivery. The ad also partially obscured promotion of their coverage of the Australian Open tennis tournament. Their approach to ads covering editorial and branding content on the front page is interesting in the context of a piece about front page advertising published Friday by Alan Mutter at his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog.
Check our NewsCred, a startup from 2008 with relaunched itself yesterday as a place where users can build their own custom online newspapers in a minutes. The result is a news site tailored to include the content you’re interested in. You make up a title, and then select the topics you are interested in following from a list supplied. You can also create a list based on your own keyword. NewsCred generates a virtual newspaper based on the latest he latest stories, from popular news sources including blogs, covering your areas of interest.
Check out how a retailer at Sydney airport yesterday was treating the collateral supplied by Pacific Magazines for the refreshed New Idea. What is the point of displaying promotional material in a light box if you cover it with a spinner offering unrelated product? New Idea was inside the store, away from the poster.
On the other side of the column is a light box with a poster for a novel. It was not obstructed. Novels were on a stand in front of the poster, not obstructing the view.
When we accept premium collateral we have an obligation to use it well and to ensure that shoppers can easily purchase the product being promoted.
Spinners are a pain in the neck in that they can be placed anywhere by people opening the business, they can be moved by customers, they can be knocked over and they can disrupt traffic flow. But we like them because they make selecting a range easy and they are flexible in terms of where we can place them.
My own policy is that I’ll accept a small number of spinners with a view to removing them at the earliest opportunity. Further, there are strict rules on where they are to be located.
What I saw at Sydney airport yesterday is not what I have seen from this retailer in the past. Looking at the rest of the store, they appear to be cramming in more product. Mthe spinner placement was part of a product density project.
We are promoting the 20th annual special of The Phantom (out today) next to our main newspaper stand. While a true special interest title, I suspect that we will attract sales from people not shopping with us looking for The Phantom – hence the placement at the newspaper stand. We will leave this in place for a week.
The Phantom is one of our most putaway titles so we know we have Phantom customers visiting us.
Network Services sent us 20 copies of Weight Watchers Cook Easy. It has a return date of 2016. We don’t have space for another cookbook so will have to take space from the ACP cookbooks.
To give the title a kick we are using a spare ACP stand for the next few days to try and shift some of the stock. We have to do something with it given that we’d have to pay to return this gross oversupply.
The sooner they bring on sales based replenishment for titles like this the better.
While the folks at Network will have their excuses, they will not be good enough. It is not their real-estate or cash at risk with Weight Watchers Cook Easy.
We have been playing with calendar and diary prices in several locations to see how much we can make this time of the year.
With the majors now well out of the calendar space and most other retailers offering 75%, we have calendars at 50% off in my newsagencies and 25% off in my Sophie Randall gift shops.
As for diaries, we are at 25% off in my newsagencies and at full price in my newsagencies and gift shops.
The majority of the stock we are selling was purchased for post-Christmas sales – meaning an excellent margin.
Sales are strong in both types of businesses. For the overall season, calendar sales ar up 18% and diary sales are up 22%.
UPDATE: I edited the post because I’d made a mistake. we’re not discounting yet.
Josh Gordon, writing at Folio, says The revolution in magazines will be here this summer (mid 2010 in the US). He provides a good round up of the devices released at the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas and, as he puts it, connects the dots on what to expect.
Every new report on e-readers and related devices brings them further into the mainstream and quiets the naysayers. This is what happened with music when it migrated from the physical product to the digital.
While I get frustrated with the number of suppliers who ask for counter space, it is great to see a counter unit work and drive incremental business. That is what we have seen with the last two issues of That’s Life magazine. The new counter unit is the only additional promotion we have done and it’s worked a treat for us.
The key factors for success with counter units as I see it are: a known brand, a pricepoint which is easy for impulse purchase, a bright display unit and it being from an existing key supplier.
LG yesterday announced a 0.3 millimeter thick bendable screen which is close to the size of a tabloid newspaper.
“By developing the world’s biggest flexible electronic paper display, we’ve gained a stepping stone for opening a new market in next-generation displays,” said Chung In-jae, LG Display’s chief technology officer.
“The market for electronic paper is growing rapidly, and we expect to gain ourselves a strong position through our advanced technology and diverse products.”
The Korea Times has details and a photo.
We have new Simson cards now in stock at all Sophie Randall stores: Toorak Village, Epping Plaza, Forest Hill Chase and Melbourne Central. These include everyday cards as well as new lifestyle ranges.
Check out this Associated Press report from the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las vegas where a wide variety of notebook computers with e-reader features, as well as dedicated e-readers were shown. They preduct sales of 6 million e-readers this year.
We have expanded our party department with the range of badges, streamers and other items from Henderson Greetings. The display is located within our greeting card department, at the front of our shop. If the range works we will expand the offer. We are also expanding the range of party related items to work adjacent to the products we have just put in.
Margaret Simmons offers excellent analysis at The Content Makers of a survey by Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation at Swinburne University’s Institute for Social Research on how much people would be prepared to pay to read a newspaper online.
The results show that over seventy per cent would not consider paying anything at all. Young people are even less likely to pay, with 76 per cent of those under 24 saying they will not shell out.
We are promoting the latest issue of Weight Watchers magazine (on-sale yesterday) in prime position at the counter for a few days. This title has a track record of performing well as an impulse offer – put it in front of shoppers and they purchase, leave it in the usual location and too many miss it.
Our promotion of Weight Watchers magazine ties in with the health related promotion we are running at the front of our business.
We are promoting both Motor magazines which went on sale yesterday. One is the regular (browsable) full copy magazine and the other is bagged (and not browsable) with Unique Cars. I suspect that regular browsers in the motoring section will see the bagged product like other bagged car magazines – a good title with junk filler in the bag. While this is not the case with Motor, it will have to live with the stigma attached to bagged products. Publishers unsure about shopper interaction with bagged titles should spend time in newsagencies and watch, especially on late night shopping nights and weekends.
I’ve heard that some NANA members are unhappy with aspects of NANA’s operation including the make up of the Board. There is talk of a special general meeting if concerns are not addressed. I am told concerns are around issues of finances, Board positions and communication.
By blogging about this I’m giving any newsagent an opportunity to comment.
Associations have an obligation to be open with members. Too often newsagents around Australia have been let down by secretive sub-standard representation.
Members of association boards need to put their members ahead of themselves.
We didn’t get our expected supply of the latest issue of Gardening Australia. Half of the stock we did receive was a bagged special offer for Newspower newsagents. Rather than lose sales and return this (since we are a newsXpress store), we put it on the shelf – and it’s selling. I don’t see the long term value on marketing group specific magazine offers. While they may drive a sales jump, as with this issue of Gardening Australia, I doubt that they promotions build loyalty around the marketing group brand being promoted. I’d be more interested in offers which promote our channel over supermarkets and other channels.
We have placed Women’s Weekly Health in prime position, next to the Australian Women’s Weekly, as well as in our health area. This co-location is important given the brand connection. Our plan is to leave Health in this second location for a month – depending of demands on space. We also have it in our health related display at the front of the newsagency. I expeect the title to do well for us with this coverage.