Free products on magazine covers drive retailers nuts

Walk through the magazine aisles of any newsagency in Australia today and you’ll find magazines with shopping bags, chocolate bars, aprons, chocolate bullets, pens, pencils, tampons and more chocolate attached.

While free product samples are a great way to draw attention to a magazine and offer added value to the purchase, it makes retailing the product challenging. Usually it’s easy to navigate. However, right now it’s peaking. We have more free product attached to magazine covers than I can recall in the last 10 years.

Donna Hay offers a tote bag; recipes+ offers raspberry bullets; Good Taste offers Lindt chocolate; Fresh Living offers a free Lovatts Crossword book (which we sold last month!!!); Vogue Girl offers Maybelline mascara. This is but a small selection of the giveaways.

What I’d do differently to allow the product to be merchandised well and out of respect for other product occupying adjacent shelf space is put giveaway product behind the counter. I appreciate that some retailers would be frustrated with this – however, the outcome will be better in store. As it is at present, this stock burdened with giveaway product on the cover gets battered quickly and this turns consumers off.