Brisbane Times growth
The Brisbane Times news site from Fairfax Media is growing in popularity as this daiily reach graph from Alexa shows:
According to Alexa, only 5% of traffic goes to the blogs on the site.
Mother’s Day 2007 greeting cards
In keeping with our strategy of starting early with seasons, we have the just half of our Mother’s Day card range up. It’s moving well and we are still a month away from the day. The Hallmark materials make the display.
We use seasonal displays like this to underpin our relevance and our range for the seasons. It’s a way of demonstrating our point of difference over the majors.
Crikey magazine doing well
It’s good to see the Crikey magazine from the Australia Zoo doing well with the kids. This could be a project newsagents more formally partner with to foster their education programs. Newsagents and Australia Zoo make a good fit.
Building better ‘newspapers’
I first heard Rob Curly speak last year at the Beyond The Printed Word conference in Vienna. Rob is a visionary in newspaper circles and a guru at harnessing new technologies in newspapers. On March 27 this year Rob Curly spoke as part of the Spring New Media Lecture Series at The University of California Berkley. His presentation It’s Not About the Device, It’s About The Information is excellent. If you want to hear first hand about the newspaper of the future, take the time to watch and listen to this presentation. Then, visit the Wasington Post On Being and see how Rob is reconnecting his newspaper with its community.
The connection for newsagents is that the challenges Rob talks about for newspapers relate to our newsagencies as well – relevance and connection. Do we get that as a channel? Only time will tell. Publishers understand and are embracing what Rob and his ilk have to say. Check out the Washington Post. It’s changing. Are we?
Kudos to US Berkeley for posting Rob’s presentation online and making it available free.
In store magazine promotions
We have allocated and aisle end for ACP Connections promotions. It’s valuable space but well used thanks to the excellent materials the Connections team provide. It’s frustrating that at Easter and Christmas they take time off from promotions. We’ve created our own thing for Gardening Australia:
The best way to keep the space allocated and the retail systems working like clockwork is for these promotions to not stop.
While the folks at ACP will not happy at my swipe here, I hope they understand where I am coming from. Newsagents work to processes and if you take a week off then it is easy for the process to be forgotten.
The folks at Pacific will be unhappy that such great display space is given to ACP. If they created a weekly promotional package like I get from ACP’s Connections program I’d find a good space for it.
I want my shop to look fresh and vibrant and weekly point of sale materials help achieve this.
Hot stationery deals
We’re using the time between Easter and Mother’s Day to really push the newsXpress Hot Stationery Deals offer. This flyer has gone out with the local paper this week to houses around our centre.
The promotion has hit at a good time because we have considerably overhauled our stationery range. We have the promotion product on display in a high traffic area in the shop and it’s moving. It’s also encouraging people brought in by the promotion shopping our stationery aisles.
We’re expecting to run one of these promotions every eight weeks, in between ink and toner promotions.
Chasing Asian consumers
Newsagents interested in connecting with Asian consumers ought to consider carrying Informed Investors in their shop. It’s a fringe Chinese language title – ideal for newsagents to demonstrate our point of difference. I’ve blogged about it before and push it again based on feedback from some in the target market.
I have no commercial relationship with the publishers.
High cost of free newspaper
Newsagents make around 87.5 cents for every copy of the Winning Post they sell. They will make between 10 cents and 15 cents for each copy of Fairfax’s son to launch free weekly sports newspaper The Form they give away. Why would they chase the smaller amount promoting a title which could reduce sales of the more lucrative title?
Gerry Harvey slaps newsagents in the face
Lateline Business last night carried a story about Gerry Harvey’s desire to win the Officeworks business for his Harvey Norman group out of the sale of the Coles Group. The interview with Harvey was a deserved slap in the face for newsagents.
Newsagents ought to watch the Gerry Harvey interview in full. It shames us. Harvey is right when he says: “there’s not a lot of opposition out there to Officeworksâ€. Sure, there are more newsagencies in the stationery space than Officeworks stores but we get it wrong. We devote too little space to stationery, adopt out of date pricing practices, do not harness our national footprint, manage brands badly and have not moved into the big box space.
Newsagents have rested at the nipple of regulation for too long. Look at how much of our floor space we devote to newspapers and magazines for 25% GP. Compare this to stationery space where we control pricing and ranging. Are we process workers or entrepreneurs. Our shop fits answer that question. Gerry Harvey is right, Officeworks has no competition – certainly not from newsagents.
Gerry Harvey is a brilliant retailer. Officeworks under his control would force those few newsagents doing stationery very well to step up or get out.
If we were smart, suburban newsagents would have banded together and created superstores to compete with Officeworks. We could have done this, targeting Officeworks, while maintaining stationery departments in our shops for local shopping.
Don Imus and Alan Jones – the same but different
This is a video of the racial comments by US shock jock Don Imus which resulted in him being taken off the air for two weeks and facing the sack. CNN reports that his advertisers are running from him. Google lists over 3,000 news stories about this.
In a related story, here in Australia, ACMA, the Federal Government’s media watchdog says: Sydney radio station 2GB breached the code by broadcasting material on Breakfast with Alan Jones that was likely to encourage violence or brutality and to vilify people of Lebanese and Middle-Eastern backgrounds on the basis of ethnicity.
No sooner had ACMA announced their findings and the Prime Minister backs Jones. Huh? Is the Prime Minister that scared of Alan Jones and his Sydney coterie that he will go against the findings of the independent watchdog? I guess the response demonstrates the power of the Jones microphone and therein lies a reason for David Hicks spending five years in jail before getting his day in court.
While The Age in Melbourne runs the story on page 1 and devotes editorial space, I suspect that few in the media will go hard.
Alan Jones cannot take back his words just as Don Imus cannot. It is a test for the media as to how they report and follow up this story. Australian bloggers and independent media have an opportunity to demonstrate their point of difference – as they have done in the US over the Imus story.
It wasn’t me, sir
I was interested to see GNS (Group Newsagency Supplies – the major newsagent stationery wholesaler) use page one of their latest newsletter to comment on my blog post about them supplying stationery outside the newsagent channel. A newsagent brought the matter to my attention having been unable to get the attention of GNS management on the matter. I blogged about it and now GNS has responded. GNS, of which I am a shareholder, could consider a more transparent and open relationship with newsagents. Maybe a blog so people could comment on the views published by GNS management. It would be more democratic than the one way communication from the organisation today.
Free racing newspaper from Fairfax frustrates
Fairfax has broken with convention in their launch of The Form in NSW as a separate title on April 20. The Form is not as separate as it seems. While the title has its own identity, distribution is tied to the Sydney Morning Herald – home delivery customers who stop their SMH delivery need to have the delivery of their free copy of The Form stopped at the same time. What this means is that newsagents either need software changes to automate the process of handling the two titles as one or the newsagent needs to remember to check whether a customer is getting The Form. While many customer stops will be for the whole of the account and not matter, some will be for one or two of the titles on order and this is where newsagent memory or processes will be essential. If a newsagent forgets to stop The Form they’ll have angry customers to deal with.
Delivery newsagents will receive 15 cents a copy for delivering The Form. For most, this is break even. For others it will be loss making. Retail newsagents will receive 10 cents a copy for which they need to display the title next to the SMH. With this shopping centre space costing around $1,500 per square metre a year, The Form will be loss making.
Fairfax could have been smarter about this. For example, keeping the title within the newspaper or having a separate price so the title stands on its own.
Newsagents are time poor enough. They have just lost more time thanks to Fairfax.
UPDATE. Here are two valuable contributions I received from newsagents late today on this issue:
A more immediate threat is the availability of both time and available space involved with the delivery of early morning product . Should an estimated 40% of Fairfax customers request delivery of their free The Form we are required to find space for an additional 80-160 copies of this additional publication within our vehicles that already accommodate a full load of Newcastle Heralds, SMH , Telegraph and to a lesser extent Australian & Fin Review (with magazine) on Fridays !!!!!!!!! Presently Newcastle Newsagents would deliver an average 350 Newcastle Herald , 120 Telegraph and 60+ SMH on a usual Friday plus the smaller titles – there ain’t much space left.
It will be very interesting at about 6-30am this Friday when the punters finally realize that their Friday Fairfax Newspaper does not contain The Form , ( despite an extensive Radio and print advertising campaign ) and promptly phone their local Newsagent to make a very loud complaint.If The Form lives up to its hype you also need to consider the possible loss of sales of publications like “The Sportsman†and “Winning Post†– $1.20 compared to $5.00, and you get a free paper. Not only is it a cost burden on the Newsagent, it reduces his income as well.
Newspaper home delivery for 5 cents a day
Piet Bakker’s Newspaper Innovation blog reports that the New York Post is offering home delivery on subscription for US$13 a year or 5 cents a day. We have a way to go here in Australia before we hit 5 cents a day – except for the university, football club and gymnasium deals.
One outcome of the new media laws could be a more competitive newspaper marketplace and lower newspaper subscription costs – and a drop in what newsagents are paid to provide the service. Newsagent leaders are likely to accept this as their view in the past has been that anything, even a loss, is better than nothing.
A world without advertising
Bob Garfield invites us to think about the unthinkable, a world without brand advertising. In The Post Advertising Age, published by AdAge, Garfield lays out why he thinks such a world is approaching. He questions the evidence some use to say all is well when he writes about newspapers and magazines:
There are some clues in a February speech by Timothy Balding, CEO of the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers: “What we are seeing completely contradicts the conventional wisdom that newspapers are in terminal decline. … The fashion of predicting the death of newspapers should be exposed for what it is — nothing more than a fashion, based on common assumptions that are belied by the facts.”
Balding’s set of facts comes courtesy of the proliferation of skimpy freebies, such as Metro, which are to newspapers what Skittles are to cuisine. His rosy outlook, however, does sound familiar. In the halls of media power, the optimism seems positively infectious. Jack Kliger, president-CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. and chairman of the Magazine Publishers of America, declared this spring: “We are no longer threatened by digital media.” Perhaps he didn’t notice the precipitous drop in readership, what with the industrywide circulation fraud and all. Or perhaps he was busy killing ElleGirl and Premiere, but never mind. He’s dug in: “I’m not ready to end up my career watching our industry get marginalized and fade away.”
Newsagents are regularly being told that the talk of doom and gloom is misplaced and even mischievous. Newsagents are being misinformed by publishers and their mouthpieces because ignorance among newsagents serves publishers well.
Jeff Jarvis offers, as usual, an excellent perspective on the Garfield article at his BuzzMachine blog including this:
And what he’s really saying behind all that is that the fundamental economics of media are, if not imploding, deflating. That is a big deal and has implications we can’t yet imagine in media and marketing as well as in the proliferation of small media that can afford to live without big marketing — if it’s ready. Hang on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Downhill.
It suits newsagents to listen to publisher claims that it is business as usual – we’re too scared to contemplate the reality. It also suits newsagent associations to remain silent on what is really happening since they rely on publishers for funding.
The facts as shown in the balance sheets of publishers in Australia and overseas speak for themselves. Smart newsagents see this and are adjusting their business models accordingly. If only more would do this and, at the same time, exert more control over their businesses and, in particular, supply arrangements with newspaper and magazine publishers and distributors.
This is what newsagents must discuss. Nothing else matters right now but the disruption our channel faces.
One reason I started this blog was to educate Australian newsagents about the changes which will affect their businesses. I have no doubt that Jarvis, Garfield and many like them are right. We are in for a rough ride. But it is a ride newsagents can survive and even enjoy if they take the reins of their businesses and stop allowing publishers to control their lives.
Newspaper uses print to drive online traffic
The Washington Post has just concluded a 27 part series on US lobbyist Gerald Cassidy. What is interesting about this series is that the first installment was in the print edition and all subsequent installments were published online. It’s a smart move because the publisher wins kudos for an extensive work yet does not have the high cost associated with print to publish. I wonder if we will Australian publishers start a series in print and continue online only?
The Inspire Action blog has some interesting comments about the Washington Post move.
Magazine to publish online only issue
The New York Times reports that US newsmagazine The Week is publishing an online only bonus issue sponsored by Lexus. This is another example of a publisher understanding the opportunity for growth from online distribution versus offline. Jeff Gomez has some good points to make about the move at his Print is Dead blog.
The folks at the week are doing what they need to do to build their audience. Retailers of newspapers and magazines need to make equivalent moves to find new customers in the changing world.
Australia Post strays further from postal services
Here is Australia Post’s latest retail catalogue. It strays further from the products and services permitted under the Act yet the politician don’t care. They don’t care that more than 850 government owned retail outlets take home and small business stationery sales from newsagents under the successful and respected Australia Post shingle.
This latest catalogue promotes: plush farm animals; USB sticks; copy paper; office stationery; Norton security and plenty of other items which have nothing to do with providing a postal service.
I am angered than the Federal Government has allowed Australia Post government owned stores to encroach deeply into newsagent territory unchecked and that the politicians who have presided over this don’t even have the guts to answer simple letters of complaint about the unfair competition. If it were their personal investment being eroded by a government enterprise I am certain their would be action.
Their excuse is that Australia Post needs to diversify to cover its costs. If that is the case why is this an Australian problem. We don’t see it in the US, Australia, France or the UK. Indeed in the EU even the postal service is about to become highly competitive. Here, Australia Post has protected foot traffic and they leverage that to take sales from newsagencies like mine.
Embracing school holidays
We have made space for a School Holiday Fun table at the front of the shop. We’ve brought together products from various categories in the newsagency which relate to the target demographic: 5 to 12. Art products, magazines – K-Zone Total Girl and others, textas, scrap books, pads – anything likely to help with school holiday activities. Even Sudoku and other small puzzle titles.
It’s a healthy table – no candy. It’s about interaction. None of the items is on special as this is not about price. The table is a service to parent and grandparents wanting something to do with kids on holidays. We’ve skirted the table with a quick School Holiday Fun skirting which, next year with more time, we could make look more attractive.
What I like about this home grown marketing idea is that we’re promoting across the categories and doing it in a way which is focused on helping people through school holidays. It’s about customer service and being attuned to customer needs.
Memo to magazine publishers: while this may not be the sexy magazine display you’d like to see promoting your titles, it’s an example of how newsagents can tell a story with your titles as the hero and thereby demonstrate why they are retailers you ought to nurture more rather than seek competitive outlets to.
I’m proud of our School Holiday Fun table – I hope other newsagents copy it.
Easter newspaper bumper edition frustration
Newsagents in NSW tell me they have been hammered over Easter as a result of the bumper edition strategy adopted by Fairfax for the Sydney Morning Herald. The duplication of some parts of the newspaper over two days confuses customers. Other customers are angry when the newsagent does not have the stock of both parts to make a ‘whole’ newspaper. Staff in newsagencies Friday and Saturday copped a fair beating from customers over this.
Being Easter, Newsagents have no one in authority at Fairfax to take the problems to, they are left to deal with customer anger alone and in the way of these things, the impact on goodwill is felt by the newsagent and not the publisher.
What newsagents want is the newspaper of the day to be provided to them as a complete unit for delivery. Not a bit today which is also to be used tomorrow and not at a quantity which someone in Fairfax controls as opposed to the newsagent applying local knowledge.
While the Fairfax executives reading this will say, here he goes having a whack at Fairfax again, I invite them to actively engage with newsagents across NSW on this issue – find out how botched the bumper edition strategy is and how much it upsets customers and newsagents.
In Victoria we have smarter people working at Fairfax and The Age this Easter has been bumper edition free.
Promoting single copy newspaper sales
Fairfax is running a competition to promote over the counter sales of The Age. The prize is a $5,000 shopping voucher. To enter you buy the Age and fill in an entry.
This is a good promotion for customers but maybe not so good for retail only newsagents.
I am suspicious that the data gathered could be used to offer home delivery deals to the entrants which does not help or respect my business at all – but I acknowledge that it would suit Fairfax’s business goals perfectly.
If building a marketing database is a goal of this campaign then I would prefer Fairfax to offer me something for active participation – like a retail retail pick up subscription offer as I blogged about two days ago. Such a win win approach would find greater support from the growing band of retail only newsagents.
To the Fairfax people reading this – don’t worry, we have the entry box at the busiest point on our counter – prime real estate – as well as the posters displayed in store.
Construction noise kills magazine sales
The noise in our shop and back room has been debilitating this last four weeks, so much so that customers turn and walk out. Magazines have been the hardest hit. Our sales growth is consistently above average yet over the last four weeks, magazine sales are down 17%. Magazines are a browsing experience and with the retail space so uncomfortable people don’t browse and so they don’t buy.
We’re talking with the landlord about the financial impact of the noise.