I have been contacted over the last two days by several Queensland distribution newsagents this week about the Play-Doh promotion being run next month by News Corp. promoting their Courier Mail newspaper.
This blog post is for them.
The main complaint is the meagre margin of 11 cents per item sold. Distribution newsagents receive this eleven cents for handling the promotional product. This will not cover labour, space and shrinkage in handling the product.
While News Corp. will say the pay-off for newsagents is increased sales, I doubt the company would accept that response if a supplier of theirs used the same argument. Indeed, given the slim margin for newspapers the bump i sales would have to be extraordinary to make the promotion profitable.
News Corp. needs to listen to newsagents on promotions like this. The old school way of doing things, as is reflected in the promotion, is not appropriate to today. In fact, it disrespects newsagents.
When a supplier expects a newsagent to provide labour to support the supplier business they need to compensate the small business newsagent fairly. Newsagents have no capacity to hire staff to work for as little as News Corp. is paying for this promotion.
Newsagents simply need to grow some balls and refuse to do these promotions until they are paid better. No point in complaining about if you aren’t willing to do something about it. If every newsagent stood up and said we will no longer take part in these for that remuneration then News Corp would either have to cease the promotions or provide for better remuneration. The only entity these promotions benefit is Newscorp because I can guarantee you they are making more than 11 cents per items sold.
Paul two who contacted me Wednesday have done just that.
I cancelled the last coin promotion and have told them we will not participate at the current margin in any future promotions.
There is a difference between not taking part and not promoting. We do not actively promote and are lax about the tokens. But refusing to supply to our most lfrequent customers seems an odd way to maintain customer loyalty. Customers do not want to hear about our supplier issues nor should they.
Colin is spot on. This is exactly what i have done for the last 12 or so months and will continue to do.
Colin when I stopped doing them a couple of years ago I would explain to the customers why I had stopped doing them and I would say 99% were in support of my actions. Many were extremely surprised about how little we actually received for the the paper and the promotions. Apart from in the promotion period I don’t believe it has lost me any sales and TBH for the 10 or so cents profit I really don’t care. And if you think newspaper purchasers as a whole are there for any reason such as loyalty you are sorely mistaken. It’s purely convenience. What will you do when the dailys stop being printed daily in the next couple of years ?
I find that customers will side with u on something like this – but they dont really mean it. Self interest wins with customers. As we would expect.
Newscorp are full of tish. We struggle to get extra papers at the retail end for most of these promotions so there is no benefit sales wise just extra work that probably earns newscorp a profit kick.
if you think that stinks – wait till you read the payment details on their Australian / Telegraph bundle promotion
Brendan same here
Often cant get an increase in papers.
So news ltd are insincere when they alway talk about an uptick in paper sales. They are not even ready for an increase.
If you are a sub agent for papers contact News Corp direct. I have found they can fix supply issues.
So has anyone sold any of these brilliant promotional items ?
I sold 2 for the first 2 days 1 yesterday and so far today its down to 0.
Would be interested how many others have seen the same sort of results.
Hi Pat, We have sold a maximum of 9 of these in a day. Thank god we got 60 of them each…. Terrible promotional product and terribly run. I think they know it though.
So far I have a 6% sell through, compared to a 76% sell through with the coins/medals.
May have performed better if run during school holidays.
A handful sold each day. Waste of time, space and effort and money losing to boot. Who do I contact at Newscorp other than my rep/merchandiser to let them know how useless these promotions generally are? Having only ever been a subby I have no point of contact that matters.
Didn’t participate in this promotion and probably will not in any future promotion (including the coins) unless our commission is increased. If we just roll over and do these promotions, by this I mean selling just a single item to 1 customer then News Ltd will continue to offer us peanuts.
The only way we will actually get a decent cut is if a large number of newsagents say no and return 100% of the stock. This will never happened so I have moved on to focus on promotions and activities that yield a return for me, not a supplier.