We have placed the Australian Women’s Weekly branded Big Summer Puzzle book in our high traffic women’s area as well as in our crossword area.
We see this as the kind of title which is more likely to sell outside the traditional crossword category – in part because of the AWW branding and in part because it is a special (seasonal) edition. It demands to be promoted accordingly.
We have broken with MPA magazine layout guidelines and created thee feature (promotional) columns in and around the women’s weeklies segment and this is helping is achieve growth for other categories which fewer customers browse. This strategy provides us the space to promote Big Summer Puzzles. We will leave it here for a week or two before replacing with another title we choose to promote.
I like the idea of going hard with a title like this, grabbing as many sales as possible early in its shelf life. This helps with space management as well as cash flow. We use this approach often, most recently with the AWW Christmas Cookbook. I think that what we are doing in this area is more important, for us, than wonderful aisle end displays.