The food magazines made freely available at checkout counters of Coles and Woolworths are excellent publications, far superior today than was was available even a couple of years ago.
Looking at the Christmas edition of the Coles magazine custom published for Coles by Bauer. This is a publication they proclaim is Australia’s No. 1 food magazine – I can see why people would be satisfied with this as their Christmas food magazine. For free they get access to recipes from Curtis Stone and others, baking tips, presentation ideas and plenty more. Someone on a budget wanting inspiration for Christmas food ideas will get it with this title.
That they can pick up the title for free at Coles could give shoppers reason to not visit their local newsagency to browse a broader range of food titles. There’s no point in complaining since Coles is doing what they need to do to drive sales. The magazine does that well through ads and editorial content. The consequence for newsagents, I think, is less of an appetite for the everyday food titles we sell.
Mark you are spot on. 5 years ago we would sell:
100-120 Superfood ideas /issue.. now >5
150-200 AWW Cookbooks /year…now > 35
35-40 Recipes + /issue… now > 5
15-20 Donna Hay / issue….now > 5
…the list goes on.
Particularly for AWW Cookbooks, competition and discounting via other outlets has killed the brand.
Some innovation in the space would be nice. The food titles are generally the same old same old as thy were 5 years ago. We need some new concepts, something value-added, to push the category.
Earlier this year I was watching a miniseries called “Paper Giants” (I think). This is a dramatization of the battle between New Idea and Woman’s Day in the early eighties. I wasn’t taking much notice until the then editor of New Idea was standing in a queue at a supermarket checkout. She noticed another woman reading a magazine while waiting to be served (magazines were the sole domain of newsagents to this point of time). She made a decision to put New Idea into supermarkets.
Presumably Paper Giants is roughly based on fact then this was the decision that started the demise of the newsagency channel as far as magazines go. Wonan’s Day soon followed and the rot started. The next scene had dialogue between Kerry Packer and the editor of New Idea. Kerry quipped that newsagents would not allow supermarkets to sell magazines. History will show that, not only was Kerry a bad judge of supermarket power, newsagents had no control of their own channel.
Supermarkets have taken over the ownership of magazines. They are innovative and aggressive. They don’t have to be accountable on every little detail as we do.
Newsagents stumble on behind wondering what is happening.
Competition from free websites shouldn’t be underestimated either.