It frustrates me when I see a magazine publisher promote that their latest magazine is available at all good newsagents. They control where their magazine goes – or their representative distribution company does.
My message to suppliers: don’t shift judgement of which are good newsagencies and which are not on the basis of where you choose to place your title.
Okay, I accept they are using a cliche without thought. Shame on them and for the judgement they impose in our small business channel.
I caught up with this tweet from the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and responded to them just now: @ausgrandprix FFS! you choose which newsagents get the magazine so you decide which ones are good? Your words could use some work.
Oh crap! its official I am a bad newsagent.Wow how do I approach this new dilemma should I work on becoming a good newsagent or should I go fishing.Decisions’ decisions ?????????????Where’s my rod.
I think you are being far to precious here. The word selected newsagents should have been used, and you could have kindly commented as such to the publisher..
Joe this happened too often for me or others to go to suppliers who do this. They need to own the problem as they are eating it. It’s an example of ignoring that they are in control of allocations – through their own actions they decide who are ‘good’ newsagents.
Ken, what took you so long to decide.
I think we might be getting a little precious. Stating that it is available at ‘good newsagents’ is harmless. I imagine most customers simply assume that the outlet they frequent is one of the ‘good newsagents’. We have more significant things to worry about than this.
Ted it’s not costing anything to raise this. They don’t say good newsagents, they say all good newsagents. If drawing it to their attention gets them to change their pitch then that’s good. If they ignore it, then they are ignorant.
Ken & Gary….I’ll bring the beer!!!
Hmmm….what difference does ‘all’ make? I think they intended it as a positive….better than saying ‘not available at all bad newsagents’ I guess.
I have no major issue with the pitch. And it also cost me nothing to say so.
Mark, is correct. If it says at “all good newsagencies” and I don’t have the product it infers that I am a bad newsagent, and worse the perception of the customer is that I could be a “bad newsagent” because the product she asked for was not available.
We have an excellent mag called SA Life (it is my top selling mag) and every month the publisher goes on the radio to
promote it and I have asked her over and over again to please reference newsagents in her blurb but all she does is talk about how to get a subscription.
Now I get subscriptions but my retail space promotes her mag every single month and we sell hundreds and I object to being left out of the marketing spiel.
Having said that I don’t know what we do about it, but it tells me that the publishers do not value newsagents very highly and that is my point.
Hasn’t this also been done for ads promoting new release books?….available from all good bookshops
Not much difference there
Yes, it’s a common approach. My only beef is where suppliers who control where their product is available use the term.