The Australian today has an ad promoting a bunch of News Life Media magazine titles and an easter-themed gift with purchase that is exclusive to Woolworths.
While I understand the need for publishers to promote different retail channels, I can’t recall News Life Media supporting newsagents with advertising like this for promotions nor can I recall them offering a seasonal gift like this across a range of titles.
It’s this type of promotion that diverts traffic from one retail channel to another. It also reinforces a consumer view re the value proposition of newsagents versus supermarkets. News is promoting Woolworths as a better value retailer for the titles.
News should realise that when it comes to seasonal related promotions there is no better retail channel than newsagents. We own seasons.
Smart newsagents presented with this promotional opportunity would have placed the titles with an Easter themed display. They would have done this without charging extra for the additional space and effort. They would have done it with other Easter product. Smart newsagents would have been more engaged than Woolworths. Yet we have been overlooked.
Shame on you News Life Media.
Interesting comment from a customer about the merging of Trade-A Boat and Trailer Boat. The customer buys Trade-A Boat, every month, because he is into the bigger size boat. He explained that Trailer Boat magazine covers the smaller craft. Last month saw the first issue of the ‘merged’ magazines – Trade-A-Boat and Trailer Boat – at an increase of $1.00 to the original price of Trade-A-Boat. He was not impressed by the fact that the ‘merged’ Trade-a-Boat magazine was 75-80% Trailer Boat content. Has any other customers raised concern about the ‘new’ Trade-A-Boat magazine?
Mark,
Whilst slightly off topic the new News pricing for Monday to Friday and Saturday newspapers comes into effect next Monday in SA.
The retail price of the Saturday paper has jumped from $2.00 to $2.50 the extra commission to Distribution Newsagents on copies supplied to retail outlets = ZERO, Subagents receive an additional 0.0625 per copy BUT nothing for the Distribution Newsagent!
Granted, we will receive the .0625 cents on Home Delivered copies – BUT NOT all copies – Cafe’s, Hotel’s, NIE Packages, TAB and many more will be at a reduced rate.
There are never ending costs in Subagent delivery, especially in SA where current weekend publishing times have been very late.
It seems News doesn’t value the work involved in Subagent Distribution.
John
Agreed, same here in VIC with the upcoming Mon-Fri price rise to $1.30 for Sun and Advertiser. Retail commission goes up inline with 12.5%, but distribution commission remains the same as before, effectively dropping to 11.5%
Although to be fair, Fairfax has already pulled the same stunt earlier with the move to a fee for service rather than commission structure. Shortly after, their cover price increases meant the fee structure had actually become lower then the original 12.5% commission.
I’ll open a separate topic on this.
This is what occurs with short term managers. They look for the instant result but in the long term their business will be at the mercy of the behemoths. This is why newsagents are reducing magazine space. They get little support from many publishers. These publishers ultimately will be screwed by the big boys but the short term manager will be long gone by then.
It is frustrating to see supermarkets getting free kicks like this. News treats us poorly in my view but we will not do anything about it.