We have two almost identical looking issues of Top Gear magazine on the shelves at the moment. One is the Australian edition (on the left in the photo) and the other the UK edition. We are supporting the Australian edition with better placement and with a co-location strategy (with newspapers for this past weekend). I would prefer that we are not in this position of having almost identical twins competing for shopper attention. While some might say that I shouldn’t be concerned because a sale is a sale, I am more concerned about potential shopper confusion. Don’t get me wrong, I am okay carrying the UK edition of Top Gear, I’m just not that keen when it and the Australian edition look almost the same.
Our household would not watch the Austalian show and much prefer the UK show and I supect many others do too so this might be the better one to promote first. What the differance in content?
The same happened in Singapore with the global and Singapore English edition. What happened was the publisher ceased distribution of the overseas edition as part of the licensing deal for the local edition. I was quite surprised to hear the publisher opted to do that, but at least it meant the local edition was the only one on sale.