The encyclopedia promotion with the Herald Sun of almost two months ago was a huge success. Lack of stock meant we took more than 300 backorders. The backorders finally arrived late last week and it took three and a half hours to sort and label everything. We will make $30.00 gross profit from the sale of these promotional items. The labour cost of sorting the goods was $77.00, counter time in taking and following up the orders $100.00 and follow-up phone time and costs an additional $50.00. We’ll lose close to $200.00.
These promotions are fantastic in that they support the newspaper brand. Newsagents are paid too little for the work involved and newsagent cots escalate out of control when publishers underestimate the success of the promotion. Throw in the customer anger hurled at newsagents who have no choice but to blame the publisher and you begin to wonder about the overall benefit. To my mind it begins and ends with scale out. Publishers need to work harder at getting this right. Newsagents ought to be given a fairer commission by the publisher as well.