Newspaper marketing

I have been wondering about the plan for The Form, the new racing guide published by Fairfax yesterday – separate for the first time from the Sydney Morning Herald.

One possibility is that they will make it a free weekly newspaper like Sport in London. Sport is distributed every Friday morning around London and while it has a broader focus than The Form, the free distribution model is one option available. The background material on their website provides a helpful insight into why they chose the free distribution model.

The UK Sports Journalists Association blog published a post April 19 about plans to launch Sportsnight, a free daily sports newspaper for London. This is an interesting and bold development – a daily (six days a week) sports newspaper.

This activity shows that the free newspaper distribution model is alive and well in niche areas. While Fairfax may have made some missteps with The Form yesterday, it shows them playing is a space which is working elsewhere. I would not be surprised to see them separate further from the SMH and pursue a broader audience.

The Age today has another post it type ad – this time promoting weekend home delivery – $30 for twenty weeks. The bright ad pulls focus from the content of the front page and partially covers promotions for two features. When I pulled the ad off my copy, it tore the paper.

As a retail only newsagent I’m not all that happy about the offer. I’d rather see more effort put into promoting impulse sales in my shop.

Rydges Hotel in Canberra helps blokes pass the time while standing at the urinal by posting two full pages of the Canberra Times broadsheet. Today’s news selection was about the US shooting in Virginia. Heavy stuff while you’re on a rest break. Not sure if this makes me a pervert but here’s a photo of the toilet news offering.

That’s a lot of reading.

Newsagents are copping flack this morning from customers about The Form which launched today. I’m in Canberra today and noticed that at three non newsagent outlets the SMH is available but no copies of The Form. Here’s what newsagents are saying:

– The marketing material from Fairfax provided to some outlets does not make it clear that a purchase of the Sydney Morning Herald or the other participating papers.

– Customers expect The Form free with their paper and are annoyed it’s separate.

– Some newsagents have insufficient stock. UPDATE: make that: many newsagents have not received sufficient stock to cope with demand.

– Fairfax received too many requests for supply from SMH subscribers to get them processed in time leaving many home delivery customers without the race guide.

– Newsagents are copping flack because of these and other issues without compensation by Fairfax.

The Form doesn’t make sense. Why separate out of the newspaper a popular section and make customers jump through hoops to get access to it? One theory is that this sets the new title up for wider free distribution. But if that were the case then the launch would have been handled differently from the outset. As it is, Fairfax has got their customers and the supply chain offside. The title has a stink about it.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Victorian based Fitness First members have been offered The Age newspaper home delivered for 12 months on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday for $49.00. The usual price is $348.00.

While I agree it’s reasonable for Fairfax to tap into organisations like Fitness First with a mutually beneficial offer, I wish that they would provide an offer I can pitch to my retail customers. I have Age customers who are more loyal to The Age than new customers attracted through the Fitness First offer yet they have to pay full price. The loyalty of these customers goes unrewarded.

I’d like Fairfax to offer newsagents a subscription like deal for loyal home delivery customers. This would be demonstrate the importance of these retailers in Fairfax achieving its sales goals. As it stands today, the message for consumers is – don’t pay retail.

The downside of the home delivery offer is that Fairfax and News will continue to cut costs from the home delivery service – meaning that newsagents will make less and less per paper delivered. Newsagents carry a cost of deals like the Fitness First offer even though they have no control over the terms.

The customer uptake for the Adelaide Crows and Port Power car flag promotion run by the Adelaide Advertiser exclusively through BP and On The Run outlets has been so low that they are repeating it in today’s Advertiser.

The Advertiser has a track record for ignoring retail newsagents with such promotions – to their peril it would seem. Hopefully, the poor uptake of the AFL flags promotion will encourage them to ditch BP and On The Run and go back to newsagents were they enjoyed greater success.

Promotions such as the AFL car flags in Adelaide and the AFL cards currently running in Melbourne at the moment are as important for the sponsoring newspaper as they are for the AFL and AFL clubs. The Adelaide clubs and the AFL would have to be concerned with the poor uptake – that’s if they know about it.

Newsagents are better connected with their community and more likely to get behind promotions like this. Also, they see more regular traffic than petrol and convenience outlets. How many times do you go to a petrol outlet in a week versus how many times to a newsagency? Some newspaper and magazine publishers have done a disservice to customers and their promotions partners by driving customers away from the channel not to mention the disrespect to the newsagents who have served them well.

To Advertiser Newspapers marketing people – you need to update your website to indicate that you’re having a second crack at this promotion today.

Photo courtesy of Advertiser Newspapers’ Adelaide Now website.

As a Fitness First member I received a subscription offer in the mail yesterday for The Age: 52 weeks of Friday through Monday home delivery for $49.00. Saving over $299.00 a year according to the brochure.

“Consumer behavior has changed,” Schaub explains. “They will not go out of their way to find your product. … If they go to Starbucks, you have to be inside Starbucks and be in their pattern. They won’t turn the corner to find you.”

That’s Dan Schaub, senior vice president of circulation for the Sacramento Bee quoted in an excellent article by Jennifer Saba about single copy newspaper sales published two days ago by Editor & Publisher. Newsagents, staff in industry associations and publishers need to read this. They (we) need to read it and discuss it. This article goes to the heart of the challenges we face in newsagencies in Australia at the moment.

I especially enjoyed reading about the research by the Newspaper Association of America including this:

Buyer behavior has become more erratic when it comes to purchasing papers at the newsstand (or local convenience store or supermarket). This means front-page design and hard-driving marketing tactics are even more necessary to ramp up sales, the study suggests.

We’re seeing erratic buyer behaviour here. This is why publishers want to get their newspapers into more outlets like Gloria Jeans, Big W and Starbucks as we have seen over the last year or so.

The article details this mystery shopper promotion run by the Sacramento Bee circulation people:

In addition to upping racks and distribution in retail outlets, the Bee made sure to hit the streets in an effort to get to know managers and store clerks — the people who decide the placement and sale of the product, much like Jimmy Newsboy of old.

To get the copies flowing, the circulation team approached sales clerks with a “mystery shopper” incentive program. Sales clerks who suggested to any customer that they buy the Bee, would receive money on the spot — $10 to $20 — if a team member “caught” them doing it, during a surprise visit. Using the power of peer pressure, the Bee distributed a newsletter every week to the participating stores listing who won the cash. Those clerks who failed to mention the Bee during the covert visits were also listed. “We saw a big difference with that,” Swift says.

The mystery-shopper contest was combined with price pulsing (a reduction in the price of the paper). Initially, sales grew 17% during the promotion. Even after the price went back up and the incentive program ended, single-copy sales grew 8%.

Be sure to read the whole article. In my view the issues are the same here except we’re a little behind. The article provides advance notice – an opportunity for newsagents to get on the front foot.

None of these stuck on the masthead for weeks and now two in three days.

The Age today has another post-it type ad stuck above the masthead. It’s covering the promotion of a free DVD they are giving with the paper today which is odd.

The publisher needs to understand that these post-it notes frustrate customers. Just look at how many are removed at the counter or outside the shop and thrown on the ground.

Also, as a retail only newsagent I don’t want to help the publisher convert retail sales from my shop to home delivery sales.

My understanding is that News Ltd is to launch a Brisbane edition of their popular MX free daily. MX is a good product as it’s better than expected success in Melbourne and Sydney attests. I understand the importance of free dailies to publishers. My only hope is that they do not leave their current focus on major city transit locations and start to locate product in retail channels. This would hurt newsagents.