Back in the day when a promotion like the latest book offer from News Corp. was launched there would be advance information, including to software companies – so newsagents could land the offer in their business with the right data management processes to ensure efficiency and maximise the opportunity.
No more.
This book offer from News Corp. this past weekend, ahead of a price rise slipped in unannounced, leaving newsagents and newsagency software support people dusting off previous advice late. It was okay in that previous advice worked. That’s not the point though. Some newsagents, especially some new newsagents, were unnecessarily stressed because of poor comms from the publisher.
The weakened circulation management infrastructure in capital city newspaper publishing offices results in less support for offers like this and less engagement in newsagencies.
The books are nice but $3 each is a bit much especially when trying to take the sting out of a price rise. Is the goal of these promotions mainly to placate or bring on advertisers, as they don’t raise sales noticeably. Which is obviously not the goal if retailers get significantly less promotion items than the number of papers they normally sell.
Very dissapointing promotion, i think there has been too much of the same type of promotion of late, needs something new and not books again . This time customers would not even take the free book.
After 13 years of having these promotions forced upon us and doing our best to promote them this time News Ltd decided we were not permitted to take part. Hopefully in the future they will afford us the same courtesy to pick and choose which promotions we are involved in