Queensland Newspapers made a heap of noise a week ago about the Australia Day promotion they were running in the Sunday Mail. On the 18th they had a spread on page 3 about the free flag they were giving away on January 25 and listed all the things you would be able to do with the flag. I have been told by a friend that along with their 244 copies of the Sunday Mail yesterday they received 20 flags. While they were able to scrounge another 50 flags from their area manager, it was still not enough. This promotion tarnishes the reputation of newsagents in the eyes of consumers more so than Queensland Newspapers.
Newspaper publishers need to learn that they should not start a promotion unless they have the capacity and commitment to ensure it reaches its full potential.
Queensland Newspapers owns an apology to Sunday Mail readers and newsagents.
Allocation error or common across the channel?
We opted out of this farce, by telling customers that we were not supplied the flags, as we received 50 for 400 papers. It was easier to blame queensland newspapers for not supplying at all rather that telling of under supply. It seems with their promotions, they don’t get the supply right. The upcoming national geographic dvd collection which starts this sunday is also undersupplied. Luckily we have had a full supply with this promotion via daily telegraph, so hopefully not too m any will want it through the courier mail. Its about time the giveaways are allocated one for one. New Idea, Take 5 and Thats Life can do it.
Lets see what happens to their National Geographic DVD promotion.
Ted
I know from six and while the sample is small, it feels like a systemic problem.
Mark
This happens with every promotion run by newspapers. Until allocation is changed to 100%, newsagents are going to get abused. We sent an email to circulation early in the week, advising that we wouldn’t give out the flags unless we received more, guess what no response.
So who cares if staff are abused? The sad part is customers miss out on showing their support to our great country.
We had comment today from a customer when we told him we were out of the flags that we would have sold them. Mind you this was today, the customer had a token from a paper he brought at Woolies, and was not buying anything else.
These types of promos I usual don’t mind but from now on we will be stating very clearly that all promos are for our paper customers only. Negative I know but this is our POD from the nationals.
We should have opted out… Our 200 flags for the over 1,000 papers we go through is a joke – gone by 7.30am. What is most upsetting is that we were called unAustralian by many customers and we have a stock management problem.
QLD Newspapers always come off smelling as roses in the customers eyes, and we wear the abuse. No matter how hard you expalin…
Maybe one day they will get is right, but app 20% of your paper allocation appears to be norm with the freebies.
Mark, I am glad that at least someone has an QLD Newspapers area manager they see… We had not seen ours for 6 months.
Peter,
Hopefully the blog post and comments here will bring shame on QN from the broader News Ltd community.
Promotions are important if they enhance the consumer / newsagent / brand relationship. It appears that this latest QN promotion has failed.
Mark
Perhaps worth a complaint to the relevant QLD govt consumer affairs department? I can’t think of the official term but isn’t advertising a promotion knowing you have insufficient quantities something that is frowned upon?
They get away with it by saying while stocks last and at participating newsagents. Interesting to note that even though we said we didn’t have the flags we still sold out of sunday mails. Noticed whilst driving today, I saw numerous cars with 2 flags on, so not sure where they were able to get supplies. Also noticed yesterday a service station who is a subby of the delivery newsagent, with at least 12 flags used to decorate shop.???, instead of being available to customers. This is the supports the argument against giving to service stations and supermarkets, do they care about the customers?
Have QN run anything like the flags in the past? If so, there is no excuse for getting the figures so wrong. You can understand it if they had no experience and simply underestimated the demand but it almost sounds like they deliberately undersupplied the market. Why would they do this?.
QN aren’t the only ones who get in wrong, in our experience everytime there is a promotion we are undersupplied. It is about time newspaper publishers provide 100% then accept returns, rather than short supply in the first place. Or stop these giveaways, and look at making their product more appealing without a freebie.
How bout offering a letter for publication in the paper itself outlining the frustration and difficulties imposed?? Who knows, they may even consider it. Post a copy in your poster frames….
wollworths and coles dont do these promos why should newsagents?we are never asked if we want to hand out flags or dvds. iam sure that woolwooths or the like are and say no too hard tell the newsagent to do it.
In our case we are meant to supply promos to the supermarket in our territory, but don’t as we don’t get enough for ourselves. And we get grief from customers when they come in to ask us for it, they are upset because they can’t get it at the supermarket. Can’t win.
supply disgruntled customers with the telephone number of the QN rep for your area and let him get a feel of the anger that newsagents face during these abyssmal promos – the coles manager in the centre went into a rage because the newsagent refused to hand over a flag to a customer who had purchased their newspaper there instead of supporting their local newsagent –
spread the pain and have the telephone number available of the person getting paid from QN to manage these insulting debacles and encourage each disappointed customer to call asap
As Brad mentioned earlier, when we get a ridiculously small amount of free product as opposed to the amount of papers we get we only give the item to customers who buy the paper from us and not bring in a token from elsewhere.
It’s far from ideal and if given a choice of course i’d rather not do this and give to everyone. But we don’t have that luxury and i feel our hand is somewhat forced given the supply we receive. There’s nothing worse when you have loyal customers who’ve been coming to you for years only to not be able to give them whatever is on offer so that’s another reason why we do it as we do.
Of course some customers don’t like that and you get abused on occasion but if you don’t get abused by them then you’ll get abused by someone else no matter how you distribute them so you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Another thing i do is for everyone who misses out i tell them, even urge them to ring the Herald Sun and complain about the paltry numbers they produce of these things and how ridiculous it is that so many people miss out. I figure if people do that and they get enough complaints then it might just make the newspapers lift their game a bit. I won’t hold my breath though.
It’ll be interesting to see how many pedometers we get for this Saturdays HS promo. Given they’re free then no doubt it’ll be very popular but how many we all receive will be anyones guess. Bring on the fun and games……..
I THIS BLOODY SECURITY CODE . IF I GET IT WORNG WHY DOES IT WIPE OUT EVERYTHING I’VE TYPED- WHY DOESN’T IT GIVE ME A SECOND GO. I GIVE UP ON TRYING TO COMMENT.
I agree with most of the comments in this thread and face the same angst from my customers. I too have a Woolies next door to me and have the odd local bring in a coupon demanding a free flag, medal, cd or whatever is being given away to embellish the paper that day. Whilst the rep and the paper would urge us to simply give them away to any person with a coupon regardless of where they purchased their paper from I think morally you should only get it from the point you purchased it from. Yes, I am a News Agent however embellishing a product purchased at Coles or Woolies in my view sucks the big one and I simply won’t provide it. I’ve had next to know complaints if it is explained properly.
Some newsagents I speak with have the opinion that the need for a tighter reign on supply of freebies has been brought on by some newsagents themselves who either used to or continue to give out the freebies to people that don’t necessarily buy the corresponding paper. I guess those newsagents may choose to do so in the name of appearing to be helpful in the name of familiarity and no personal cost. I know I get asked to do so all the time. The previous owner’s attitude was “who cares?” and just gave away the freebies with the view that the sooner the counter was cleared the better.
My strategy is to simply give out the number for Fairfax and News and let the customer complain directly. I know I can point to the small print describing “While Stocks Last” but it is a simple cop out and the papers know it. I am pretty sure the situation is not going to change but would loved to be proved wrong.
my view is to get rid of these freebies altogether.
It just creates more angst, I never really sold out my papers just bcos of the freebies.
We had complaints from home deliveries that they never get the freebies, ie they expect us to home deliver them as well. So we started to keep some behind the counter to appease them so they can come early in the week to claim. I know it’s “while stocks last” but what do you do!!!
Then you get those that buy the paper from wherever cutting out the coupons so they can double-dipped again.
At one point we started cutting out the coupons then and there on point of purchase/collect…. but it’s too time consuming and we get angry remarks from customers too bcos of delays.
It’s a no win stuation for us at all unless there is 100% supply of freebies or very close to it expecially for foreseeable popular ones.
Carol,
Hit the ‘back’ arrow twice, you will get your comments back.
Carol,
If you make a mistake on the security code, click the back key twice and you are returned to your text. Alternatively, if you aree likely to get the code wrong, scan the text with your mouse and copy it ready for pasting when you try again.
mark
Baz, I did actually try that very thing. I have made calls, sent emails and faxed letters with various issues only to be ignored. Imagine how surprised I was when I didn’t even get a response to a Letter to the Editor!! It probably didn’t help that I opened with “shame on you, Qld Newspapers”.
As for the Australian flags, I was bothered to see quite a number of vehicles late last week sporting (sometimes 2 of) the very same flags we were due to give away with tokens on Sunday. Hows about newsagents working together and doing the right thing?
We have a woolworths supermarket ten metres from us.We only supply the freebies to them if they are sent with a label from NWN or Fairfax. I am told that they are sometimes not included as they want to be paid a handling fee? to hand the freebies out with the papers.If a customer buys the paper from Woolworths and they send them to us to collect freebie i say they are only if you purchase from newsagent . It has to be this way otherwise loyal customers that support small business miss out.
Wendy,
BWS (liquor store) were also giving away flags if you spent $30, also cheap dollar stores had packets of 2 for $20 i think, so that would account for some of the cars with 2 flags.
Opps sorry that should have been $2
Ah, Chris, I didn’t even think of other sources for the flags. My apologies to the newsagents who do the right thing.
apology accepted
The Herald Sun were supposedly going to send us 1 pedometer for every 4 papers this week. We got 1 pedometer for every 10 papers.
It looks like instead of giving some to most of our subagents as we normally do, we will only be able to give a few to our large subagents, and everyone misses out. This will still see us out of stock by 9am.
Dean
why do you give subagents any when you are not supplied enough? at best they should receive a pro rata supply.have herald suns reps mobile phone number handy for when they run out.this is why genrally coles and woolworths dont do these type of promos.
Andy,
We have 3 look-alike subagents, who all used to be authorised newsagents. Our home delivery customers go there for freebies. We are obligated to give them some. Unfortunately in this case no matter what I do no-one will be happy.
Dean
why would you give them anything else but the same % ratio to papers? you may as well have stock as long as possible
Andy,
With the quantity we got, all 4 of us will be out by 9am.
My formula for giving them out is based on sales, however I give a higher % to large subbies and a higher % again to lookalikes. I give a higher % again to ourselves.
This time I won’t be able to give any to large subbies, some of whom sell more papers than what I do in my shop.
I will be receiving calls from about 30 subbies on Saturday asking where there pedometers are, only to have to explain to them that it is a newsagency only promotion and we did not receive enough to give them to anyone.
Unfortunately my rep is on holidays, and he doesn’t switch his phone on when he is not working. I guess I will just give out customer supports number
Have you contacted the Herald Sun about your supplies? Sounds like they stuffed up your supplies. We received 20% of our normal sale in pedometers which is roughly what we were advised.
As for your sub agents, why are you worrying? We won’t be handing out any of our stock to them. It is a newsagent only promotion. The only sub agents you should be supplying are your lookalikes.
I just hope the Sun are clear to their readers that it’s only available in newsagents.
While new to the newsagents game can i ask how many of the bloggers are members of either national or state body’s, and if they are, have brought there concerns to the relevant bodies. The overwhelming impression i am gaining from each new day in this business is ALL suppliers know we are a divided industry and while we continue to be so, they WIN.
Richard,
The associations cannot negotiate commercail deals for newsagents as they have no compliance mechanism. This is a task best undertaken by the marketing groups.
My understanding is that less than half of the newsagents are members of an association. The only significant growth in membership in the last year has been with the QNF and with NANA.
Mark
I hear a lot about marketing groups on here ,wouldn’t we get better deals on products if newsagencys were all counted as one instead of all these different markerting groups looking out for themselves
Shaun,
There is no mechanism of compliance through which newsagents can negotiate as one. It’s not an association function. It is a commercial function.
mark
Ah well, another Sunday, another botched Queensland Newspapers promotion with the Nat Geo DVD’s.
Our 100 free giveaways for our 1,000 papers is going to go down well with our customers once again. Regulars have been prewarned ‘first in best dressed’.
QNP advised us that the quantaties we received have been based on previous promotions run… Interesting, how when last years Nat Geo ran we were selling 200 per day for the 14 days, and had an initial quantity of 400 for the first free one. Obviously they have decided that its been 4 quarters since we ran the last one, so therefore we will divide by 4 the amount we provided last time…
have you received all the dvds yet i only have number 1 and the case so far and a bit worried about the rest turning up
Dvds up to number 7 arrived last week. I think you should follow up Shaun.
We received 75 dvds for today, and 25 for each day next week. Our thoughts are hopefully our customers got the series with the telegraph. Which I might add, we were adequately supplied.
Having now re-read the QLD Newspaer promotional material this is a scam for Newsagents and a direct attempt to reduce our, their distrubution networks income streams.
By reducing supply, and offering 7 day customers the opportunity to get the full sets from QLD Newspapers, without any compensation to the Newsagent this is pathetic.
How can QLD Newspapers reasonably expect us to promote this offer…