News Corp. is paying small business newsagents twenty cents per copy of The House of Wellness freebie handed out.
News Corp’s expectation is rooted in decades of history with our channel, history that is not so relevant today.
While some newsagents will like this type of campaign, most will not, they will see it as an annoying activity they have to undertake in the face of concerns at how News Corp. may treat them if they refuse.
For the twenty cents per copy, News Corp. expects newsagents to:
- Receive the product and store it for up to a week it ready for the promotion date.
- Put up promotional posters. Install promotional shelf wobblers.
- Have the freebie on hand at the counter for give away.
- Collect tokens from customers handed for redemption from customers who have not purchased the newspaper from the business.
- Deal with freebie seeking customers who tend to be more demanding than people who actually spend moey with you.
If this issue of The House of Wellness freebie is like the last issue, it is an advertising catalogue.
In my opinion, the twenty cents per copy is disrespectful. It does not provide reasonable compensation for what is expected. It is not a socially responsible payment from News for what they expect of newsagents.
My other concern is the disruption to the business promoting something of little or no relevance. The posters and wobblers are visual noise distracting from higher margin products newsagents can sell. We need less noise and not more.
Newsagents who will hand our the freebie might consider doing so without the posters and wobblers. I can understand that. Others while choose to not engage at all, and I can understand that.
News Corp. needs to be more respectful of newsagents in structuring these marketing activities for its clients. They need to price fairer compensation for newsagents. Otherwise, fewer newsagents will participate and, I suspect, more of the freebies will end up in the trash.
Only half as good here in Qld. 10 cents
Bruce I am in qld and I received 20cents last time , and I am a direct supply subagent
Hi Shaun I got 20cents last time too. We are direct supply.
The cover letter says 10 cents this time 🙁
ok , I have not even seen any info this time , oh well looks like straight into the bin ,what a waste of time , printing ,man handling . Maybe we should take some pics just to show the publisher of this flyer /magazine where their advertising dollars are really going
And the advertisers Shaun – let them see the waste.
they just dont get it, sent me 100 copies and i dont have space to keep it. going in the dump bin after breakfast.
Slightly off topic but newscorp related.
On the front cover of todays advertiser there is advertised an 84 page AFL magazine redeemable with a coupon.
So far we have had a number of irate customers because they didn’t read the fine print that it was only at participating newspower stores(us being newsXpress), and they weren’t going anywhere else shopping today.
It wasn’t that surprising that when it came to newspapers the customers saw all newsagencies as equal and should have the magazine, but what was surprising was that no one knew who newspower was!
100 copies turned up today , only difference is last time I received them direct this time they came from another newsagent , so does that mean I don’t even get my 10cents ….I have had no emails or communication about this at all
Peter B, I am Newspower and I bet I would get the same response if I said “Only available at Nextra/newsxpress”.
Irate customers are nothing new in this game – my first one for the day was pissed at me because I didn’t have the MKR mag that comes with New idea – only at Coles. Others get shitty when I say I don’t sell stamps, sell being a misnomer as I get no margin on stamps.
As a newsXpress member I am surprised that you are not actively moving away from the “newsagent shingle” as Mark keeps advising. 🙂
What is stupid about this latest Advertiser promotion is that it is only Newspower. This is contrary to what News Corp. says it will do nationally. Dumb.
This promotion is on the same day we received and are expected to distribute the “Wellness” freebie, and 24 hours after our distributor “forgot” we were the only shop open in our vicinity on Adelaide Cup day….papers arrived 2 hours and too late.
Yesterday we referred customers to the IGA 20 metres away, today we referred them to Newspower. Both sets of customers blamed us for the incompetence of others (The Channel ?)
It’s a shame nobody checked whether I was working today, having worked all 5 consecutive days through the holiday weekend. Hopefully they will understand if I get round to “Wellness” some time pm tomorrow.
david@anglevalenews.com.au
You are probably right that newsagency customers don’t associate newsagencies with any of the relevant groups.
That is where newsXpress has been hugely beneficial in attracting non traditional newsagency shoppers. We are no longer an “agency”, we are a credible retail outlet.
It’s amusing when we have customers walk in and look around and ask if we are a newsagency. When we say yes they say can I have a scratchie, the reply, sorry we are not a lottery agent.
For some reason this AFL promotion has seen the worst for a long time in customer behaviour. It is not fair on staff as well as the public so these promos need to be rethought because they harm the newsagency channel as a whole.
Of course newscorp don’t care about harming the newsagency channel because they have a default position with the supermarkets.