I was in a petrol outlet this morning when a customer came in and asked if they had the AFL cards with today’s Herald Sun. The owner told the customer they had to go to the newsagent. The customer put the newspaper down and walked out. The owner then said to me that these newspaper promotions were “a waste of money”.
My takeaway was that newspapers are a distraction for this chap. He’s clearly frustrated with the product. His is a petrol outlet after all.
Publishers in their push to get into more retail outlets see their product treated as a poor cousin to the main product and while they may still get some impulse purchases, it is with the brand supporting promotions where they miss out.
We get this same story from our subagents, that if they run out of “free promo stuff” then no one buys the paper. The publishers do not give newsagents one product for each paper they work on about 70%, so someone has to miss out. We supply our subs one for one and every time we get paper returns and no free stuff back. I feel the free stuff is a waste of time if it is not fully backed by the publishers and newsagents get adequate levels.