Author: Mark Fletcher

We are promoting OK! at the counter at our Forest Hill and Frankston stores.  The free mascara qualifies it for this prime impulse purchase position.  The mascara itself looks more valuable than the usual free make-up with a magazine.

The additional benefit of setting up this display for the weekend is to remind our customers that OK! is now published on a Friday.  Changing habit can take a while.

Thanks to a comment here from Deb at Glenhuntly newsagency a few days ago, we have placed Weight Watchers magazine next to the latest issue of Australian Women’s Weekly with Magda Szubanski on the cover. Inside AWW is the story about Magda’s amazing weight loss since joining Jenny Craig.

Hopefully, the opportunistic placement will drive sales of Weight Watchers and AWW.

Our team at Frankston is having fun pitching two magazine categories – lad’s mags and men’s fitness and lifestyle mags. Under the heading Hot & Sweaty they are pitching a range of titles at the counter which would otherwise not get such a high traffic profile.

I love this type of marketing – bringing titles to a high traffic area and opening them to impulse purchase.  I especially like the fun in the Hot & sweaty tag – this pitches the magazines in a non-traditional way.  It is the kind of approach which gets new eyeballs looking.

The display will stay in place for a couple of weeks before being replaced.

While the two displays don’t look ideal next to each other, we are trying, for the fist time, Men’s Health and Women’s Health on the counter next to our main lottery counter in addition to their usual placement. We are still trying to figure what titles work well with customers in line to purchase lottery tickets. It is easier at our traditional newsagency counter – what we place there is working well. We are committed to finding the right titles to engage lottery only customers- hopefully these health titles work.

We had Good Food at our premium counter position for a week and sold six copies. We has The Monthly with Kevin Rudd on the cover displayed with our newspapers for the same period and sold twelve copies. While it is unfair to compare the two titles, the success of a titles in an impulse situation – high traffic and away from its traditional home – is a test of the title itself. I don’t think The Monthly sold just because of the cover, there has to be perceived value on the masthead itself. On Good Food, I think consumers don’t know where to place the title – certainly not until they engage with it. There are several excellent lower-priced ‘suburban’ food magazines and a couple of respected top end local food titles. Good Food, in the middle, seems, on our sales, lost.

We are promoting Weight Watchers magazine to customers leaving our two main magazine aisles.  This puts it in front of around 55% of men and women who shop with us.  We are using a ‘found’ space – a space we have created from nothing by moving some fixtures around and turning what was dead or near-dead space into something useful.  To create a story we are supporting the now-monthly Weight Watchers magazine with a range of other product connected with the weight loss theme.