I’ve written here before about our success with the weekly People’s Friend magazine from the UK. Their books are also popular – usually achieving a 90% sell through. This is the kind of brand extension I like: financially efficient for us and easy to display with the main title. The People’s Friend brand is in our top 10. This is a testament to our demographic and our driving of the brand at every opportunity.
We are promoting two Australian Women’s Weekly cupcake and cookie cookbooks and mini cookie and cupcake kits on our Christmas gift table. While not the prettiest display in the store, it works. The cookbooks and the cookie and cupcake making kits promote each other. It is better to display them together like this than to have the cookbooks in one part of the shop and the kits elsewhere as one would see often in newsagencies.
We are tracking sales so that we know if the various items sell together and how often. Basket analysis like this is important if we are to track hunches to see if they pay off.
The cupcake and cookie kits are part of the newsXpress Christmas catalogue offer.
Rachel Singh, a student at the digital anthropology department of University College London, has launched an online study into the state of the magazine industry. The Shifting Landscape of Magazines encourages people working, or who have worked in the magazine industry to visit the site and post comments. I especiaally like the discussion going on about the future.
Editor & Publisher published an excellent interview with Warren Buffet overnight in which he says that the newspaper industry got too complacent with its success.
“It is so easy when you’ve got a wonderful business,” Buffett told E&P during a recent interview. “Complacency is pretty easy and it is why they weren’t looking over their shoulder at what was happening.”
He goes on to say the newspapers should have tried to get more revenue from circulation over the years. This resonates with distribution newsagents who are blocked from charging a fair price for the service they offer.
Buffets comments also resonate with retail newsagents, most of whom are yet to fully leverage print media traffic into new and more profitable categories which provide a brighter future.
Thee report ends with this quote from Buffet:
We have a business model that is eroding. The whole industry. But we still have a huge base of readers.
This is true for newsagents. New devices will change how people consume news, there will be a tipping point. We have a huge traffic base today. The question every newsagent must ask is am I leveraging that traffic for my future?
We need to switch from thinking we are in a push supply model to operating our businesses from the perspective of a pull supply model.
Newspapers are using their pages to run op-ed pieces about e-readers and other print disruptive technology. John Davidson jas a piece in the AFR on the weekend reviewing the Kindle. Doig Spiers takes a somewhat lighthearted swipe at e-readers in the Winnipeg Free Press.
We should not be lured into a false sense of security by this bad press for new devices. The music industry was. How many music stores are there today compared to ten years ago? Diversification is the name of the game, not radical diversification but smart diversification into categories which are naturally adjacent to the products we sell today.
With Men’s Health selling well when displayed with newspapers, we are trying Women’s Health in this location. Click on the image to see a larger version of the photo. We also have Women’s Health located in its usual position as well as with women’s fashion magazines. We plan to leave the display next to the newspaper stand in place for at least a week. We count stock in the pocket so we know what sells from this location compared to the usual home for the title. This is crucial in guiding whether we repeat the promotion here.
Dolly did not perform as well for us last week as expected so we turned the display around 180 degrees and now have the back of the ACP basket builder stand, with the Dolly display, facing into the dance floor area of the shop (in front of the countre) and the other titles on the stand facing customers leaving our two busiest magazine aisles. The change took a us few seconds to make – hence the lazy title – yet made a good visual change at the counter.
While it would have been easy to take the display down – we could certainly use the space – we felt there was an opportunity to sell more Dolly on impulse by making this change.
We have placed a stack of copies of the Women’s Weekly Puzzle Book next to the Australian Women’s Weekly. While we are short of space we made room since it performs well here. This is a brand extension which works. I’d expect good sales in the next week for Christmas gifts. We also have the Puzzle Book located in our main crossword section elsewhere in our magazine department. We will maintain this co-location approach for a month.
We have changed our weekly magazine display at the front of the newsagency from focusing on one title to a feature title and two columns of weeklies. We will run with this for the next few weeks – through the holidays. Regulars here will know that we have enjoyed considerable success selling weeklies from this location. This stand faces the mall and attracts people to purchase magazines who are not in our shop at the time. While it drives good business when promoting a single title, it is actually more valuable when promoting a range of titles as shown in the photo.
The Age newspaper today has another ad covering half the front page – this time for Deakin University. While not causing litter or covering the newspaper masthead like the post-it type ads The Age runs, this ad covers half the news on the from page. What does this say about the value of the news on the front page? Also, what does it say about the journalists, photographers, designers and other editorial people who have laboured over a front page of which they can be proud. It says that ad revenue is more important than their good work yet is their good work which provides a medium for carrying the advertising.
We Put Think Big with newspapers last week because of the Michael J Fox cover story. While not a big success sales wise, I saw customers stop and look at the title. They would not have done this had we just left it with our business magazines. We place several titles a week based on the cover image alone.
Newsagents in South Australian have organised for themselves a meeting this Friday, December 18 between 2pm and 5pm, to discuss the News Ltd distribution and retail contracts. Click here for a copy of the flyer announcing the meeting and detailing concerns expressed by newsagents in relation to the contracts.
Speaking at this important meeting, in addition to newsagents, will be:
Newsagents in other states ought to consider attending this meeting. While the South Australian situation is different to the Eastern States, many consider it to be the trial location for a new distribution model.
News Ltd has had some time to work through its various state based publishing businesses to develop the new contracts and to consider what the future of newspaper distribution may look like. Newsagents have not had such an opportunity. Hence the importance of this newsagent well organised meeting. I hope that News Ltd does not make any moves to block the meeting.
Many newsagents attending have already been deeply engaged in this matter thanks to the newsagent-led action in SA. They are handing out questionnaires to customers, talking with members of parliament, gaining media coverage and talking with fellow newsagents. The meeting is likely to provide an update on this considerable ground level work.
I am grateful to the organisers for passing on details so that I may promote the meeting at this blog. I am hoping to be there as well.
You can read some more about activity by newsagents in SA on this by clicking here.
The snow globes and magnetic wooden Christmas ornaments are selling like hot cakes. Given their location only at the sales counter, they are purchased on impulse when finalising the sale. Adding between $1.95 and $5.95 to a sale is a terrific bonus in a newsagency. That said, in most cases we sell more than one in a sale. These items not only extend the value of the basket, they also improve overall sale margin thanks to good buying. Our margin is above 50%.
The snow globes and magnetic wooden Christmas ornaments are located at the counter without competing products nearby. It is important that customers can see counter offers, understand what they are and know the price right away.
Further to my post two days ago, we have now received 198 applications via Seek from 623 people who have viewed the ad. This is just in two days. We have received another 25 or so direct. We’re now turning the ad off because we have a shortlist of 20 candidates for five positions. Having spent hours reading resumes and application letters, I am impressed with the quality of candidates, especially those who get past the initial cull.
The Barack Obama 2010 calendar which we bought for our calendar range is set to be the dud of the season. We’ve not sold a single copy. Indeed, calendars of fanous people and celebrities are less popular than calendars of animals and places of interest. I think more people buy calendars for nostalgia than those who buy for idolisation. The Michael Jackson calendar is an exception. Anyone want a Barack Obama calendar?
The publisher of 50s Brotherhood magazine has put the title (the world’s only mini bike magazine) and associated trademarks for sale at ebay. Click here to see the ad (it expires later today). eBay is an interesting place to sell a magazine title.
Thanks to a colleague for tipping me off to this ad.
The old XchangeIT platform used by newsagents for receiving invoices from magazine distributors will close in just over two weeks. Only the new XchangeIT Link platform will work. The impact on a newsagency of not receiving invoices electronically is significant. This is what will happen in newsagencies which have not migrated to the new magazine distributor controlled platform. If you are not sure about the new link, Tower Systems has a free video any newsagent can watch to learn more about complying with the new XchangeIT Link.
The line above the masthead of the Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper today sets newsagents up for a rugged day once their allotment of fre. Tear off the token and hand it to your newsagent it says. The colleague who alerted me to this promotion this morning received one DVD for each newspaper. No backup stock for the customers coming from supermarkets, petrol outlets and convenience stores looking for their DVD.
So, what does the newsagent do? Give out one DVD for each newspaper sold? This would see them abused by customers who have walked all the way to their shop to collect the DVD. Or, do they give our DVDs to every newsagent who presents with a coupon. This would leave them without stock for existing customers and subject to certain abuse.
This is a good promotion, certain to sell newspapers. The problem is the management of the DVD. If you want newsagents to be the collection point then supply enough stock to enable them to represent your brand professionally. One DVD per newspaper supplied to the newsagent is not enough in many situations for a popular free DVD.
We say this ourselves with the Herald Sun give aways last Saturday and Sunday. The abuse from customers ran most of the week. We were damaged and the publisher was damaged.
This is not rocket science. Publishers and retail newsagents could work together to make these promotions work. If only publishers would talk with us before setting us up for retail rage.
We are promoting the Christmas edition of the Australian Women’s Weekly at the counter this weekend – from yesterday. Sales continue to be strong for this issue as we had three days spare at our premium counter position. Selecting AWW was a no brainer based on the sales performance of the issue. We kept a selection of marketing collateral for exactly this opportunity.
The other key titles we want to promote this weekend Better Homes & Gardens, Prevention, Dolly, Cosmopolitan and Family Circle all have good positioning elsewhere. AWW had come from its front of shop display earlier this week.
Our display and similar displays in other newsagencies are an example of the difference between newsagent support for magazines and the support from supermarkets and other retailers. Here we are well into the on-sale and we are working the title. We are doing this because we are specialists. Most other retailers would only do this if required because of commercial terms between their head office and the publisher.
The Tiger Woods story continues to move magazines. New Idea benefited the most earlier this week. Now, Who and OK! are benefiting. Who probably more so than OK!. We have all Tiger related titles co-located to drive better sales. This tactic is working. While I feel for the pain he is in from the worldwide attention, I appreciate the contribution he is making to magazine sales.
Asics may want to review their magazine advertising strategy. I was moving a stack of magazines at one of my newsagencies yesterday morning and these catalogues fell out. Seriously. There was not much friction between their catalogue and the pages of the magazine – hence their easily falling out. Since I am not being paid a cut of the advertising I didn’t take the time to put the ads back in. I am not one of those newsagents who does around removing advertising inserts but if they do fall out I won’t labour over getting them back in place.
With a 12% sell through in four weeks we are taking the latest issue of the Simpsons comic off early. We need the space and the cash would be handy. I am sure that I am not alone in experiencing poor sales numbers. Comics are struggling from the benchmark data I see and publishers don’t appear to be cutting back on their print runs.
The Age has announced an increase in cover price to $2.50 on Friday December 18 and Friday January 1. Newsagents will need to manage these one off price increases to appropriately chare for retail sales as well as to accurately bill sub agent and home delivery customers.
The ANF has sent out an email to newsagents this afternoon about the News Limited contracts. The QNF and NANA has this information out to newsagentsin their states more than two weeks ago. Others communicated similar advice at arou d the same time. Tthe ANF has come to the table late and from what I can see is not offering anything new to the advice provided already by others.
Check out the date on the masthead of The Age newspaper today. It reads November 11, 2009. Hmm, today is December 11, 2009. Oops. It may make the newspaper a collectors item for those interested in such slip ups. Click on the photo for a larger version.