There is a party going on at the moment and newsagents have forgotten to turn up. Nothing unusual about that. It’s an annual party yet we neglect it year after year. The party is Christmas and while we celebrate in store we do very little to drive customers to our shops. Okay, that’s not quite true. Many of us send our catalogues with offers and there is a smattering of TV advertising around the country. But that’s it. Compared to our major competitors in the greeting card and Christmas product area we are not on the consumer radar. Australia Post, Safeway / Woolworths, Coles, Big W, Target – I could go on – they are all on TV touting Christmas offers. Much of their TV content could relate to newsagents – greeting cards, wrapping paper, calendars, small gifts. The longer newsagents continue to ignore the party the more their share of business will fall.
A challenge is how to brand such advertising. For example, while we’re all newsagents, newsXpress stores would want their branding up as would Nextra and Newspower. The answer is to support all the brands. Christmas is one time the channel ought to consider an unified approach to celebrate the season and raise newsagencies and the key banner groups back into the minds of consumers.
As a shareholder in newsXpress I’ll be suggesting that the banner groups get together to discuss this in preparation for next Christmas. Either that or one of the groups breaks out with a cut through ad which pulls them ahead of the others on TV and in other media. Something has to happen because the current inaction is losing sales.