We have redressed our Father’s Day magazine display with this display of magazines with a Spring theme. Usually we would be bigger and bolder with a Spring theme but space issues right now preclude this.
This Spring display has been up 48 hours and we have sold product off the display. Our plan is to switch titles around Thursday to give other titles coverage.
We will leave this display run a week as there are two new title launches next week for which we need front of store space.
A newsagent called me Monday to suggest that these front of store display defeat the purpose of the full range of magazines and that we are stopping customers browsing. They may be right. The sales data from my shop suggests that more customers buy from the front of the shop than anywhere else. Observation shows many do not browse magazines. These front of store strategies are designed to lift the efficiency of lottery and newspaper sales – the two categories where more than 60% of sales are those products and nothing else. By focusing on the front of the store we have improved efficiency considerably.
Since this display is not promoting a single publisher’s titles it will not be recognised by them as valuable. I’d argue that newsagents need to do more of these whole of category displays rather than single publisher or single title displays.
I think that the publisher’s would agree that this sort of cross promotion is a great way to go.A single title promo does play a major part of brand awareness but cross promotion is also important.If their title is getting premium end why would they complain?