Check out the premium floor display unit promoting a range of magazines in Woolworths supermarkets at the moment. It’s a stunning unit promoting the bonus gift with purchase – a much better unit than this publisher provides newsagents …very frustrating.
I be the publisher is paying for floorspace.
There is no reason publishers can’t create floor stands like this for newsagents. If participate is a problem then only send displays to newsagents who actively request one through an online form/email.
Love to have one of those in my shop. And I wouldn’t charge the publisher for floor space, I’d just sell more magazines.
I haven’t paid for floorspace in Woolies ever so I dont believe they would have paid for it.
There are a lot of floor stand suppliers in Australia and some have Chinese suppliers to keep costs down. No reason why the newsagency marketing groups can’t use their scale to buy for their members and create their own floor stands…..if you dont already.
Niall this is a publisher stand. Some marketing groups provide collateral for higher margin product.
I read this blog most days as I find the Marks editorial thought provoking. But sometimes the editorial is crap. This is the case here. Why are we whining about Woolworths ability to get off their backsides and work with whoever is responsible for the display to market their product. They made the effort, not newsagents. We did absolutely nothing and want a similar display.
We whinge about magazines, we whinge about Golden Casket, we whinge about phone credit.
We are a disorganized and fragmented industry on a downward spiral. If we had leadership and worked together Newsagent could have the ability to broker deals such as this display.
The self interest of marketing groups working against each other instead of working together only inflame the situation and will ensure that the industry remains fragmented and impotent.
Gary, while I’d like to see it, I don’t see any national unification happening in part because newsagents don’t want it and in part because of poor leadership for 10 years. I say this based on their actions or lack thereof.
I’m not sure Woolworths made this stand happen.
Gary, we aren’t all in a downward spiral thanks.
Different marketing groups suit different newsagents, and some are happy just being independent. Keeps it interesting not all being the same.
It’s hard work being a newsagent, always has and always will, bit of a whinge doesn’t hurt, gets it off our chest and gets us thinking.
We actually ordered a metal stand on wheels from G&G earlier this year which has 10 pockets and the header “all you favourite magazines”. I would say similar size to the pic. We move it all around the shop promoting various titles. I think G&G still have them?
Mark,
You are, probably, one of the most respected figures in the industry. You also have great influence and have many contacts.
Keeping the friction between distributors and newsagents out of the equation, how would newsagents go about brokering a deal similar to Woolworths ? Who do we speak to? Can all the marketing groups come together for a single purpose ?
We need to start a mind set of “How can we make this happen”.
And Jenny,
Marks data analysis suggests that all is not rosy in wonderland. In my area alone six newsagents have closed their doors in the past two years. There are a number of others sitting on the edge. I can not deduce an upward trend out of this.
Garry, I think this is best done at the publisher level. Pacific magazines has nexus through which it engages with newsagents who want to engage. Bauer has the long-established Connections program for engaged newsagents. These are good platforms for this type of activity.
This publisher could do the same with this type of stand. making it publisher driven is the best approach in my view.
Only two marketing groups strongly support magazines from what I understand.