Magazine wraparound trash

Wrap around advertisements and promotions are growing in popularity on weekly magazines.This week New Idea and Woman’s Day have promotions wrapped around the cover – lip balm from Amcal and coffee from McCafe respectively. I have two issues:

1. When a magazine is put back on the shelf after browsing the wrap around catches and tears – making the magazine look damaged. Customers are less likely to purchase a copy with a damaged wraparound even if it is an advertisement or a promotion.
2. The promotions pitched on these wraparounds usually require redemption elsewhere – McCafe and Amcal are this week’s partner retailers. While I understand this is part of the promotion, driving traffic to other stores, sometimes it does not work for the newsagent since traffic is being driven to competitors.

I know I can’t get the wraparounds dropped – I am guessing they are too valuable for the publishers. I wish there was a way for them to not get trashed when put back on the shelf. of course, in new style fixturing it does not happed as there is one deep shelf for 50 or so copies. However, newsagents don;t have that. They have pocket based fixturing and the reuslt is the magazines get trashed, and flyers get lost. This wastage must have a cost to the promotion.

I don’t feel the same about the wraparounds as I do abut the post-it ads on newspaper mastheads. Magazines are not the same as as a newspaper. Also, the wraparounds are on the lower corner of the magazine cover and not across the masthead or important news.