News Ltd’s SA subsidiary, Advertiser Newspapers, has turned its back on newsagents with their latest promotion Ai2 Robots. The Ai2 offer commences October 29 and will be available exclusively through BP and On The Run fuel outlets. This continues News’ SA rejection of newsagents as their retail network of choice. While News executives say newsagents don’t offer the same compliance as BP I’d say prove it. I have been to SA BP outlets and their treatment of newspapers is appalling. Newsagents provide a more compliant front of house offering, better customer service and better in store merchandising. Fuel transactions can be slow compared to rap[id transaction processing in a newsagency.
Spurning newsagents in this way gives newsagents further reason to question the value of the News Ltd relationship. Either News is serious about the newsagent channel or not. In SA, I suspect not.
I appreciate that the SA distribution model is different with most delivery newsagents not operating a retail store. This is no reason to reject newsagent shingled stores from being the shop front for such offers. Newsagents are more conveniently located and provide better customer service than any petrol outlet. News Ltd needs to address this, nationally.
For the distribution newsagents dealing with BP is a challenge since they often wait 30 days for accounts to be settled from head office, leaving the newsagent cash-flow negative for the run of the campaign.