The Age again yesterday took money to defile their masthead. They stuck a gaudy Primis Telecom post it ad on the masthead. They also gave newsagents boxes of Primus Internet Phone Trial packs to hand out with the newspaper. This was hard slog in my shop. Less than 10% of the customers accepted the starter kits. Others were annoyed at the intrusion. Many had questions – “what’s an Internet phoneâ€, “who is Primusâ€, and, “can I use this without a computerâ€.
As is happening with these stuck on masthead campaigns customers ripped the ad off and left it at the counter for us to trash.
While I welcome the 10 cents paid by The Age to hand out the starter kits, the payment did not cover for the counter time lost explaining the offer to customers. Folks at The Age need to spend time behind newsagency counters and experience the mechanics of these campaigns themselves.
The best place to find customers for an Internet Phone offering is online. Chasing customers offline at a newsagency when someone is buying a newspaper is asking for questions and frustration from all involved.
This is an extensive campaign by Primus. The Age website also ran a banner ad today:
This was placed in the right top corner of their site. Then, repeating the intrusion on the front page of the newspaper, defiling the masthead, they whacked a pop-up:
I hate this type of advertising on websites, especially news sites as it reminds me that the publisher deems the advertiser more important than the consumer.
Given the money Primus were throwing at their Internet Phone Trial, I would have preferred to see them engage with my customers through more of an educational campaign – maybe a DVD for them to play which explains what it’s all about. Handing out some software, earpieces and a microphone, in my case at least, was putting the cart before the horse.
I’ll leave the last comment to one old bloke – “nah, mate, I’ll wait until they give me a computer with paper before I want one of thoseâ€.
For such a proud company with a highly recognisable masthead Fairfax seem more than willing to de-face their product for the sake of the marketing dollar. We have yet to partake in the promotion up in the North East of Victoria and for the sake of 10 cents i question the impact it will have on sales; actually i will go one better and say it will have no bearing on this weekends sales. Fairfax should be proud of The Age’s masthead, not cover it up for the sake of the marketing dollar. There are better ways to advertise and promote, and you don’t need to de-face your product to do it
Vaughan I agree. My reading of discussions among publishers overseas suggests that The Age is almost alone on this. The frustration they are causing customers will lose them sales.