We are promoting the latest issue of Australian Traveller magazine at the counter, in a successful impulse location for us. Even though this issue has been on sale for one day, we ordered more stock as we expect it to sell very well thanks to the TV campaign and the theme of 100 Things To Do Before You Die. We also need the extra stock to promote the title with our weekly women’s magazines – a location from where this title sells well.
We are promoting the latest issue of the Australian Women’s Weekly with this aisle end display facing onto the dance floor. Hopefully, Magda Szubanski can do what Anna Bligh did not for AWW. I expected a good lift in sales from the Anna Bligh cover story last month but it did not materialise – certainly not in my stores. Magda’s story is popular and will hopefully resonate with customers.
The latest issue of Australian Traveller magazine, on sale today, is being promoted with a TV campaign which is a call to action in support of newsagents. Newsagents should support this with a display promoting Australian Traveller in a high profile location.
This issue features 100 things to do in Australia before you die, the ultimate bucket list of Australian experiences everyone should do in their lifetime, as voted by a panel of celebrities including George Negus, Catriona Rowntree, Dick Smith and The Today Show’s Lisa Wilkinson.
Panelists who have participated in the issue will be talking about the 100 list on TV and radio.
The TV campaign starts today. This is a 30% margin title – so extra effort is well worth it.
Australian Traveller’s annual “100 list” is always a big seller, and this year thanks to the TV coverage, it’s bound to be bigger and better than ever.
I urge newsagents to support this issue. Prove that we appreciate publishers who invest in our channel by running TV campaigns promoting that their title is available at newsagencies.
Check out the letter a newsagent in South Australia received from their local federal member of parliament in response to a letter on the EFTPOS issue. It is lame yet typical of the letters and ‘assistance’ newsagents have received for as long as I can remember. I love how they try and sell themselves and take a swipe at the other side.
Both sides of politics have played a role in the EFTPOS situation we face today.
Here is the full text of the letter:
Thank you for your emailed letter advising me of your concerns regarding the recent changes to the EFTPOS system in Australia that will come into effect in October this year. As I am sure you are aware in recent days EFTPOS Australia have announced specific details of the new fee structure. The details of the announcement can be found on; www.eftpospayments.com.au.
The Coalition has always stood up for small business, ensuring that a level playing field between all businesses exists in order to promote competition.
You will have heard our Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey voice his concerns with the lack of competition in the banking and payments sectors has allowed banks and financial institutions to increase fees without increasing the quality of service.
However in this case, EFTPOS has said that they need to upgrade their network so they can compete with the likes of the Visa and Mastercard payment systems. I have been told that EFTPOS conducted a significant stakeholder consultation and agreed that the fee structure would ensure both stability and competition in the industry. Significantly the changes have been welcomed by “Choice”.
I note that there were several changes foreshadowed in the article that were not contained in the final plan released on the 8th March. I have been told that this is in response to the stakeholder consultation undertaken by EFTPOS payments Australia.
The only real way to ensure better rates and products in our banking and payments sector is to facilitate more competition in the sector. The Coalition released its Nine Point Plan to encourage competition in October last year. Sadly, the government’s response did not include any positive initiatives to help small business.
You quite rightly raise the issue of predatory pricing. Like many I have been disappointed the ACCC seems reluctant to become involved with actions to eliminate or reduce unfair practices.
Therefore the current debate surrounding milk becomes an important case for many other industries in Australia.
Thank you for taking the time to write to me. I always appreciate hearing your views .
SincerelyROWAN RAMSEY
I would rather Rowan have said that he would do something specific like make representations to the RBA on this matter.
Is it just me or are magazines more popular than ever as the bonus gift with purchase. Check out the advertisement which appeared in The Sunday Age. Buy a phone and you get six or twelve issues of one of the magazines on show, delivered to your home. A pretty nice gift for a phone which is not all that expensive.
This is the second promotion I have seen in a week where a magazine subscription was the free gift with purchase. While I am no marketing expert I wonder if this devalues magazines in the eyes of consumers? I certainly tend to look on free gifts as not having as much value as the promoters would have us believe.
While I don’t like to see products I sell being given away so easily, I don’t begrudge magazine publishers participating in promotions like this. I just wish they wouldn’t do it.
We have our Easter cards stands located next to our Easter Egg display, at the front of the newsagency facing out into the shopping mall. For Easter more so than any other season this is important. It is one of the smallest greeting card seasons so we need to chase any opportunity to guide purchases. Hence the placement of our card stands next to our Easter egg display.
We are promoting the latest issue of UFC magazine with this display on the dance floor near the sales counter.
I like the blue there of the cover. This, coupled with the cutout which we kept from the launch issue, makes the display stand out amid the sea of colours in the newsagency.
We also have a waterfall display of UFC in our men’s magazine aisle – more for destination purchases. The display on the dance floor is for impulse purchases.
Issue 1 of UFC sold well, easily justifying the promotional effort. We’re hoping issue two will be strong.
We are promoting the latest issue of Burke’s Backyard with this display on one of our aisle ends – facing onto the dance floor. Following a week in this position, we will migrate the title to an in-location display for the second week of the on sale. We are starting to look at feature displays like this based on return. We need at least five sales in a week to justify the space and labour commitment. This minimum sales target will put some previously promoted titles out of contention for prime space promotion.
COSBOA, The Council of Small Business of Australia has joined the fight against the new and unfair to small business EFTPOS fee regime. They have issued a stinging press release which includes:
COSBOA believes that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has once again failed small business and given big retailers and banks a leg up that they don’t need.
The RBA has made a decision to allow for increased costs to the users of EFTPOS facilities. Woolworths and Coles, who were members of the EFTPOS board have already made agreement with the banks, who were also members of the EFTPOS Board , that they will not receive any fee increase which means small business owners will have to pay for this decision. The banks and the big retailers will increase their profits and small business owners will have to pay for it out of their family income.
I hope that newsagents are acting on the engagement opportunities which I blogged about here previously.
Radiohead yesterday released a free newspaper simultaneously around the world including here in Melbourne to tie in with the physical release of their new album, ‘The King Of Limbs’. This is an interesting mode by the popular band.
Who knows, Radiohead using print to promote its album may reinforce the value of print as a medium to their fans. For some it will be a novel experience to read ‘news’ on a print medium. I’d note that the new album is also being released on vinyl as well as other more current media.
Both Woman’s Day and New Idea have wonderfully retro images on their covers this week on honour of the death of Elizabeth Taylor. The Woman’s Day cover is particularly retro – with the whole cover given over to a stunning image. It’s a good change of pace for the magazine. Well done to the teams involved in creating the covers and the content inside.
Retro is certainly in at present – look at the sales of the 25 year old cookbook. The Sunday Age had a story about retro products being the flavour of the month at present.
We are promoting New Idea and Woman’s Day together on our newspaper stand.
Temptation Busters, connected with the popular The Biggest Loser TV franchise is an ideal product to be promoting next to Easter Eggs right now. At least that’s what we think. It makes us smile. At $3.95 this is an easy impulse purchase decision. With the TV show performing well in the ratings, the book is sure to be easily understood and of considerable interest.
With a margin of more than 50%, this book is a nice extension to the traditional newsagency shopping basket.
We hope to sell out in a few days as there are more books in the Book Sale which will work in this counter location – we have two counter locations for promoting this type of product, the other being the location I blogged about yesterday.
We are promoting the Top Gear branded trading cards at the counter with this pretty simple display. It is drawing some interest but not setting the world on fire yet. Trading cards are more interesting to a younger audience whereas Top Gear appears to be an older person’s brand. We will give the cards a week in this location to make it worth out while.
I launched the newsagency channel’s first ever magazine loyalty card in August 2004 at my then called Forest Hill Newsagency. That program was nationalised late in 2005 almost a year after I joined newsXpress. Today, the program runs in more than 160 newsXpress stores. It was copied (poorly in my view) by Newspower, Connections and a few others.
Today, six and a half years on, the Magazine Club Card loyalty program more important than ever to participating newsagents. It delivers a tremendous point of difference, something with which the supermarkets, petrol outlets and convenience stores cannot compete. It continues to drive new traffic, deliver a deeper shopping basket and generate good word of mouth.
This loyalty program delivers to participating newsagents and their customers are loyalty program which is extraordinarily more valuable and powerful than programs like FlyBys and the Woolworths rewards program. Those programs do not genuinely reward customers. This Magazine Club Card does reward customers. BUT, customers have to spend more than they usually would in order to access the reward.
The offer is simple, buy eleven magazines over eight weeks and your twelfth magazine is FREE up to the value of $10.00. Compare this to needing to spend $15,000 at Coles to get a $50 shopping voucher – as consumer group Choice recently reported and was covered on A Current Affair. at the time.
The card we use today is five versions on from what I started with back in 2004 – in artwork only. The campaign remains unchanged.
When I launched the program I expected it to run for six months. Like a drug, I can’t and don’t want to let go. Customers love it. I love it. The excitement you see on a customer’s face when they collect their free magazine. The connection you make with them at that moment will bring them back and this is what I want. I want their loyalty and am prepared to pay a price for that.
The execution is the key to the success of the campaign. This is why those who have copied have not achieved the same success. There are important business rules, an essential management structure, vital front line team training and essential performance tracking. failing in any of these areas can lead to a failure off the program.
For a few years I would show people how the program worked and provide them with artwork and the like. I don’t do that any more since newsXpress has packaged that up and made the program its own. Indeed, the success of this program is one reason some newsagents started looking at newsXpress before they joined the group. They wanted the magazine sales growth delivered by this and the other newsXpress magazine pillars.
But it’s not my intention to turn this into a newsXpress advertisement.
What I wanted to note is that here is a campaign which focuses on a challenged yet important category for newsagencies. It is just about the only magazine marketing campaign which works on the whole category and not just certain suppliers. Yes, I think magazine sales will decline due in part to migration to digital. I continue, however, to work hard to ensure that the decline in my newsagencies is less than the industry average – through programs like the Magazine Club Card.
Our latest Book Sale, which started last week, is presenting several topical promotion opportunities. We have selected two books for promotion at the sales counter – to leverage their connection with current topics of wide interest.
Earth Moves is about earthquakes and volcanoes – topics much in the news in recent weeks. TUTANKHAMUN is in the news here in Victoria because of the exhibition currently on at the State Museum.
Both titles should perform well at the counter. Once they move, we have more in the book sale ready for this premium co-location treatment. This current book sale is only a few days old and it is already working a treat – driving traffic as well as extending the average basket size.
We are reusing the I Love Magazines stand from ACP to promote the classic Children’s Birthday Cake Cookbook out the front of one of my newsagencies, facing into the shopping mall.
Space in the store is at a premium thanks to Easter, Mother’s Day a book sale and various other activities. So, our display space for this good selling cookbook was needed for other products.
The I Love Magazines stand is strong and we will get use from it for several months yet. We will choose ACP titles which will deliver good impulse business and thereby justify the premium location of the stand.
No sooner had we set this display up yesterday and there were two groups of customers browsing the title – they had approached the stand from outside the store. It is this traffic pulling which I am looking for from the stand and the titles I select for it.
Check out the sticker on the bag containing Cardmaking and Papercraft. This was stuck on all copies we received. I am curious about what Alternative Gift means. I take it to mean – hey, consider buying this magazine as a gift. If that is the case then the sticker is poor quality for the purpose.
If anyone else has ideas as to what the text on the sticker could mean I appreciate hearing them.
Startupssmart is publicising the press release from the ANF about the EFTPOS fee challenge for newsagents and other small and independent retailers following the decision by EPAL to strike a new fee regime. Click here to see my blog post which best outlines the issue and explains why newsagents have to get behind it.
Newsagents should check out The Conversation, a new news and analysis site headed by Andrew Jaspan, the former editor of The Age newspaper. For people interested in analysis of news and who want fact bases reporting and analysis (as opposed to dog whistle and shrill ‘reporting’), it is well worth a look. Check out the story about RED Group (Borders and Angus and Robertson). Oh, and check out their report on new media versus old media – there are messages in the store for newsagents.
The Gold Coast Bulletin is running a subscription campaign which offers a free six month magazine subscription to new home delivery subscribers. Newsagents will see this as a double hit, taking newspaper and magazine buyers out of their retail stores. With retail infrastructure being so expensive, newsagents want to attract traffic, not push it away.
I wish newspaper publishers would invest as much effort in promoting retail sales in newsagencies as they do in chasing loss leading home delivery business.
Related … the challenge for newsagents with home delivery is that they cannot control their prices and have very limited control over costs. Subscription deals can be expensive to fulfill.
We are promoting the Australian Property Investor at the counter to attract impulse purchases. We chose the title because of a cover with good visual cut through and an appealing headline: HOW TO INVEST ON A LOW INCOME. We figured that by placing this near newspapers at the counter we could expect to attract buyers who would not usually purchase this title. This is the same location we used successfully recently to promote The Monthly.
The Productivity Commission inquiry into the Economic Structure and Performance of the Australian Retail Industry is under way. This will look into:
Newsagents or any interested party can lodge submissions until May 20, 2011. Given the broad terms of reference I would expect the interests of newsagents to be well represented in submissions.
As a consequence of the milk price war between Coles and Woolworths, I have heard of independent retailers no longer permitted to return unsold milk according to a friend who stocks milk in his business.
So, in effect, independent retailers are carrying the costs of hefty discounts to Coles and Woolworths, along with the farmers.
Australian consumers need to remember that small businesses in this country employee more people than big businesses. They can only do this as long as they are supported by consumers.
The milk and bread price wars being run by Coles and Woolworths are not socially responsible.
After April 3 Borders and Angus and Robertson shoppers will not be able to redeem their gift cards according to the announcement two days ago. This could present an opportunity for newsagents in that we could offer some redemption for unused cards. Newsagents could run a sale offering, say, a special discount for Borders gift card customers. It could be a way of getting customers looking at our book and magazine offer. It all depends on the range of product and whether you are missing people who shopped at Borders and Angus and Robertson.
