Susan Murray, General Manager of the National Breast Cancer Foundation, has written to newsagents and apologised for not advising them sooner of the NBCF decision to sack newsagents as their retail partners for the Pink Ribbon awareness and fund raising magazine in favour of Woolworths.
In her letter to newsagents, Murray says, in part, “thanks largely to newsagent support, we have raised over $500,000 from the sale of just four Pink Ribbon magazines”. Not only this, but newsagent support has also raised over $500,000 from the sale of Pink Ribbons, pins, bands and other merchandise supporting the NBCF. This takes the total raised via newsagents to over $1 million.
The letter then goes on to try and justify why the NBCF decided to sack newsagents and replace them with Woolworths: “In summary, by attaching to the AWW we are able to increase the distribution of the magazine from 30,000 to a total of 160,000, therefore giving us the opportunity to quadruple the amount of people who will be able to get access to the magazine. Not only this, but any financial risks associated with publishing the magazine have also been reduced due to the fact that production costs no longer sit with the NBCF. This is an opportunity that we could not pass up, as our mission is to raise funds for research and to build awareness among as many women in Australia of the issues surrounding the disease.”
If the deal is so good the NBCF ought to publish the financial data.
Woolworths is a public company and as such its core business focus is its share price. The deal putting the Pink Ribbon magazine into its stores is, in my view, about buying social responsibility and this is good for profit and the share price.
Unfortunately, many charities now focus more on corporate deals than gaining support from individuals.
Here’s what I wrote to the NBCF today:
I refer to the September 21 letter from Sue Murray to newsagents published last week.
I am disappointed by your financially expedient decision and that you have rejected the more socially responsible decision.
By sacking newsagents as your retail partners you have told us we are not relevant. You have told the Australian community we are not relevant. You tell the Australian community that getting your magazine, even as a tip on, into supermarkets is more important than independently owned small business newsagencies.
Consider, for a moment, the retail experience in supermarkets. Roger Corbett’s TV ads do not reflect the reality of shopping in Woolworths. Rarely are you greeted with a smile and rarely is the experience pleasurable. Magazines are lowly rated product by supermarket management. They are at the checkout to help customers pass time. Rarely are the displays professional.
In a newsagency, on the other hand, you get conversation, a smile and local knowledge. Newsagents are magazine specialists. We cater to a diverse congregation. Newsagents provide a local community connect which supermarkets ignore.
Your refusal to distribute your magazine through newsagents says that you do not consider us magazine specialists. By partnering with Woolworths you are saying big business is more important than a community business.
As a charitable foundation your focus ought to be on the community and how you can more successfully engage with them to raise awareness and raise funds. Newsagents provide a better opportunity for such engagement than a supermarket checkout counter.
If the NBCF wanted deeper engagement with individuals and needed to boost fund raising then they ought to have undertaken some focus group research with newsagents. I am certain that newsagents would be happy to more effectively use their community connect to support charities like NBCF. Until now the NBCF relationship has been one of magazine publisher. They could have re-engaged as a social/community partner and achieved far more than getting their magazines at a Woolworths checkout.