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Newspaper marketing

Australia Day newspaper bumper edition frustrates newsagents and customers

I’ve heard that Fairfax in NSW will publish a ‘bumper edition’ Sydney Morning Herald on Friday January 26 and to be on sale for the entire Australia Day long weekend for the usual Saturday price of $2.20. I would have thought that in the current newspaper market – challenged at best and decaying at worst – Fairfax would do everything possible to not upset customers. Their customers will be upset by yet another lazy Bumper Edition. Newsagents will bear the brunt of customer anger. Talk to any newsagent and they will tell you of the frustration expressed across the counter and on the phone explaining the pricing and the convoluted rules associated with the Bumper Editions this past Christmas. Bumper Editions are not good customer service.

Everywhere you turn there are reports of sales declines being experienced by newspapers. Newspapers themselves are regularly running naval gazing pieces about their own future. Publishers like Fairfax have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in online businesses which are speeding the decline. It is odd to me therefore that Fairfax would ‘play’ with their customers in this way. If they want to delay the decline they would publish each day of the Australia Day weekend. But then, maybe the financial return is better if they run a Bumper Edition and that’s more important than what the customers want.

Memo to Fairfax: You might want to let the computer companies know about your Bumper Edition plans so that they can provide advice in advance to their newsagent clients and thereby save the hundreds of phone calls which would be made otherwise.

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Customer Service

Newsagents worried about free daily newspapers

The Sunday Herald in Scotland has a story about the possible impact of a recently announced free afternoon newspaper on newsagents. The UK newsagent association (NFRN) is holding meetings of members and with the publishers to discuss the lost of sales and customer traffic caused by free newspapers.

As data from Dr. Piet Bakker – published here just a few weeks ago – shows, free daily newspapers are growing. Even though Australia is behind Europe and the US, they are gaining traction. These free dailies provide publishers with an easy sell to advertisers and are being used in many situations to boost advertising sales for the paid for product. It makes sense. In Europe especially publishers have been very successful maintaining revenue through by launching free daily newspapers.

While it’s natural that newsagents will complain to publishers about the impact of these free newspapers, my view is that our energy is better spent expecting the move and adjusting our businesses today accordingly. Free newspapers are not new, we have seen them growing for the last five years. This is change we can prepare for today. Indeed, it is change we ought to have been preparing for long before now.

We need to rely less on newspapers for traffic and revenue. This means we need to build traffic from other categories. It also means we need to adjust the layout of our businesses and focus on higher margin traffic generating product toward the front of our shops. While publishers will resist such a fundamental change – given that newspapers have always had the best location in our shops – they need to allow us to respond to market trends just as they are through acquisition of online businesses, moving their product further outside the newsagent channel and by launching free newspapers.

The newsagent channel in Australia was created by publishers to serve their needs. In 2007, newsagents must put their needs ahead of publishers. Tough decisions face us and we must be businesslike and swift in making them.

For the record I am not advocating that newsagents get out of newspapers, rather that they invest real estate and labour in newspapers according to their anticipated return to the business.

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Media disruption

Newsagent injunction against newspaper publisher extended by 7 days

Further to my Dec. 18 post about moves by a major newspaper publisher to take away the rights of a newsagent to distribute their product – such rights are the bread and butter of small business newsagents.

In a hearing yesterday I am told the judge in the NSW Industrial Court extended the temporary injunction another week.

It is disappointing but not surprising that newspapers will not publish this story. They’re not transparent when it comes to reporting actions they take, from time to time, against small business newsagents. I am not saying they ought to have no rights to protect their businesses but rather that they demonstrate transparency.

This is a big story – then guts of a small business being ripped apart by one of their biggest suppliers on the even of Christmas and for what, to someone looking from a distance, seem to be dubious reasons.

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Newsagency challenges

Being selfish about newspaper promotions

age_cards.JPGThe Age has a great promotion tomorrow – a park of 50 Epicure recipe cards. We received 200 packs, we’ll sell 160 copies of The Age – the 40 spares will be for home delivery customers – not just from our area but others. Being in a shopping centre we get many customers from other areas. The 40 packs will be gone by 10 am. Rather than eat into the allocation and satisfy home delivery customers we’re quarantining 160 for our retail customers. I know this will upset the folks at The Age but we have to put our direct customers first. Promotions like this, with a scale out lower than demand, damage the brand – hence our decision to be selfish and hold back enough to satisfy our customers.

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Newsagency challenges

Is Fairfax about to launch online news dailies in three states?

Crikey published this story today (sourced back to The Australian) – suggesting that Fairfax is about to do in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth what News did earlier this year in Perth with it’s online Perth Now news site. Such a move by Fairfax into capital cities where it does not publish today makes sense, unfortunately for newsagents.

We have been insulated from the print media disruption seen in the US and Europe because of our strong home delivery position. This play by Fairfax and the earlier by News will take the shackles off and speed up disruption.

It all comes down to monetisation. The publishers can see the income stream. Fairfax Editor in Chief of Online Mike van Niekerk said as much in his presentation entitled Cashing in on Digital Success at the Beyond the Printed Word conference I attended in Vienna last month. Fairfax has optimised its sites for financial return. They know what they will make with local editions in these new states.

News will respond to the Fairfax move into these new markets. The more the publishers compete online the less they will focus offline. They’d disagree with this if you ask them but it’s true – you only have to see what has played out overseas to see what will happen here.

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Media disruption

Reflecting on LeWeb 3 in Paris: blogging, newsagents and our businesses

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LeWeb 3 has come to an end in Paris. It’s been an interesting and worthwhile conference. Here are my headline take-aways in my key areas of interest:

OVERALL
The world is flat.

Borders are not as important as they used to be.

Intellectual property developed in online start-ups could be more valuable to an economy than its natural resources. In Australia we’re not doing enough in this area – we’re too busy worrying about finite resources to understand that better policies can create value out of innovation.

BLOGGING AND BLOGGERS
We are behind in Australia. We need a more visible and robust fifth estate. Bloggers of Australia ought to unite and encourage more people to blog. No one else will talk up blogging if we don’t.

There is a vibrant, vocal and effective fifth estate in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the US. We have not found it yet in Australia. Here in Europe there are more bloggers per capita and they are fierce in blogging. They are using blogging to navigate to a more transparent democracy with more voices heard. In Australia we’re barely started on that journey.

Bloggers are constituency to politicians and garner respect – well during a campaign at least.

Blogging is not for geeks. Well, they do it, but so many others do and on all manner of topics. We’re not hearing these voices in Australia.

NEWSAGENTS AND THE MEDIA
The world as we know it has been disrupted. Our (newsagents) dominant traffic generator, newspapers, are not what they used to be. News is being delivered and consumed anywhere and at anytime. There is a movement to reduce filters, like mainstream media companies, and to provide more direct and diverse access to news and opinion.

Newsagents need to find relevance in this new world and find it fast. We need traffic and from that sustainable revenue.

The Internet is a supply chain game. Newsagencies were created by publishers to be a supply chain game. They need us for the next few years so they can access profits while people transition from over the counter to online access of news and information. My feeling is that there will be a tipping point, for newspapers sooner than later, where our model is no longer viable. We should see that before our suppliers.

FIND IT, 3LOVES AND OUR NEW ONLINE BUSINESSES
I won’t list all take-aways here because it suits me commercially not to.

In this conference on 1,000 delegates I heard about more than 150 Internet start-ups and I didn’t network that much. The start-up world is noisy, companies and countries are scrambling to build IP which will be the natural resource of the next generation. There is some very exciting innovation.

Web 2.0 is about social interaction. Games, virtual worlds and many other traction-gaining innovative online businesses are more about social contact than anything else. Social connection is the game in town.

The customers in control, genuinely in control. If you do not allow this they will not support your business.

Traffic must be two-way including in news and information models.

Free is the price point target if you’re building an online business.

My final take-away was not presented by anyone but it’s one which has grown with me over the last few months and hearing people talk so much about monetization over the last few days it became more important to me:

Our mission is more important than profit.

Our mission is to help individuals and businesses spend less on more effective advertising so that they can pass on the savings to consumers who can in turn use the savings to create a better world.

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Blogging

Ashes cricket pins a belated success

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The Ashes cricket pin collection promotion for the Herald Sun did not take off as we expected. As the photo shows we have plenty of stock – even more than shown. Then, over the last few days, people have been coming in wanting the whole set. It seems the series needed to get started before kids got into the game. Yesterday for example, we had several parents with kids in tow wanting the set.

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Newspaper marketing

Newspaper promotions lose money for newsagents

hs-encyc.JPGThe encyclopedia promotion with the Herald Sun of almost two months ago was a huge success. Lack of stock meant we took more than 300 backorders. The backorders finally arrived late last week and it took three and a half hours to sort and label everything. We will make $30.00 gross profit from the sale of these promotional items. The labour cost of sorting the goods was $77.00, counter time in taking and following up the orders $100.00 and follow-up phone time and costs an additional $50.00. We’ll lose close to $200.00.

These promotions are fantastic in that they support the newspaper brand. Newsagents are paid too little for the work involved and newsagent cots escalate out of control when publishers underestimate the success of the promotion. Throw in the customer anger hurled at newsagents who have no choice but to blame the publisher and you begin to wonder about the overall benefit. To my mind it begins and ends with scale out. Publishers need to work harder at getting this right. Newsagents ought to be given a fairer commission by the publisher as well.

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Newsagency challenges

INMA Newspaper Outlook 2007

blog-inma.JPGNewspaper Outlook 2007 in an excellent report by Earl Wilkinson, CEO International Newspaper Marketing Association (INMA). It confronts issues some newspapers have difficulty reporting in their pages (especially Australian newspapers) – the process of transitioning their revenue model from one based purely on print to one based primarily online with some print model. The US$195 report is compelling reading for newsagents as it 75 pages of evidence that the foundations on which newsagencies were created in the 1800s have shifted. As Wilkinson writes:

Unfortunately, the transition will be most painful for the people who are least informed about the over-arching trends in media industry: the editorial community.

I’d replace “editorial community” with “newsagents”. Newsagents don’t feel the change, certainly not to an extent to accept it as real. Not here in Australia yet at least. Newspaper sales are strong. Enough are experiencing growth for newsagents to be confident.

As this report indicates, the future for newspaper publishers is away from paid for copies and the traditional model. Wilkinson says that the “destination is clear”:

Internet-First
Local Journalism
Always On and Interactive
Core Product Smaller
Lower Profit Margins

Wilkinson sees a newspaper outlook in 2007 based on publishers moving more investment from traditional product to online and achieving more profit from online. Newsagents must listen to this message. While I don’t expect them to stump up the US$195 for the INMA report, they must take note that here is a respected executive from publisher circles saying that the game we have played for decades is over, it’s a new world and investment in your business must reflect this.

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Citizen Journalism

Newspaper home delivery prices: US vs. Australia

I found this announcement from the New York Times from February this year, advising of a home delivery increase to US$8.00 for 7 day home delivery. It was their first increase in ten years. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are the closest newspapers we have to the Times here. Their seven day home delivery fees are, by my reckoning, 40% less than those for the Times. The Times charges more the further you are from New York. I’m told that delivery charges for a year are US$255.00, making the daily cost 70 cents – between seven and ten times the Australian home delivery fee. There’s some more discussion about the New York Times figures here.

Newsagents in Australia get between 50 cents and 70 cents a week for a seven day home delivery of a newspaper. We’ve had one increase in ten years. We are worse off today in real terms than ten years ago yet wages, fuel and other costs have risen in real terms.

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Newsagency challenges

Newspapers and their future – a round table discussion

Eric Beecher, CEO of Crikey, Peter Lynch, Executive Editor, Editorial and Business development at Fairfax and Tony Hale, CEO of The Newspaper Works participated in a round table at the Media and Broadcasting Congress in Sydney yesterday. It was 2 against 1 as Lynch and Hale spun and denied for their masters about the impact of the Internet and mobile technology on newspapers and Beecher draw our attention to the move of advertising revenue away from newspapers and online, that newspapers are bleeding classified revenue and that this is their lifeblood. The audience was clearly with him on this – most were from the online space. While neither Lynch or Hale addressed the classified problem, Hale did counter with “Classifieds are moving online at the speed of a receding glacier”. Hmmm Not the best analogy. Hale talked up free newspapers and Lynch even hinted that Fairfax could play (again) in this space.

Beecher made the point several times that he likes newspapers and good journalism. His core concern is that newspaper publishers are in denial. Based on yesterday’s performance in the round table I’d agree. Lynch and Hale ignored the big issues and would have us believe that it is business as usual. The investments of their parent companies tell a different story. I would have thought that if newspapers were as valued by consumers as Lynch and Hale suggest, then the cover prices ought to reflect the added value. Instead, the cover price is used to restrict revenue share and to ensure consumers don’t have a reason to reconsider their habit.

Ten days ago at the newspaper conference I attended in Vienna I heard from newspaper publishers who would have laughed had they been listening to Lynch and Hale yesterday. In Vienna newspaper publishers were proud to talk about how they are pursuing revenue online and with free models to deliver the revenue necessary to fund good journalism. Many said the product as we know it today has no future.

Newsagents reading this should be concerned about the future of their current business model. Not next year and probably not in 2008, but soon, newspaper sales will fall. Just as publishers rely on classified revenue to fund other parts of their business, newsagents rely on newspapers for traffic, they are central to what a newsagency is. The fall in newspaper sales will bring about changes in the distribution model which will affect our businesses. This is why we need to listen to people like Eric Beecher – his newspaper editorial and management background make him well qualified to observe and comment. We need to be better informed about what lies ahead so that our business plans today can reflect a more truthful view of the future.

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Newspaper marketing

Newspapers to become bit players in media shake-up?

Graeme Samuel, Chairman of the ACCC, delivered an interesting speech at the Broadcasting and Media Congress this morning looking at the flurry of changes in media ownership. Much of what he discussed was about distribution. He started talking about how it was (is?) with the newspaper landing on the doorstep but quickly moved to the smorgasbord of options we have today. He is right to observe that the “Internet has turned distribution on its ear”. He said Australia will get a faster broadband service. This will increase the pace of change. Toward the end of the speech, Graeme Samuel asked a question which goes to the heart of newsagent concerns – “How relevant will it be to have two major newspaper publishers?” While he was talking in the context of media regulation and ownership changes, my interest was more one of how much the question sounds like game over for newspapers – certainly in terms of diversity and relevance.

It’s another reason newsagents need to plan today for this world where newspapers are not the habit they are today. Newsagents need to sit at the table with newspaper publishers with this perspective of a dramatically changed world and to have business plans which pursue traffic and margin outside the sale of newspapers (and magazines).

As Samuel told the audience this morning, the ACCC has published a discussion paper which provides guidance as to how future cross-media merger proposals might be assessed.

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Media disruption

Ashes cricket pins soft

The folks at the Herald Sun have done a great job making sure newsagents have stock of the Ashes team pins. We were ready with a good process for handling back orders and advance orders. The expected rush didn’t happen. It’s been very well supported in the newspaper so who knows why this one has been soft with consumers. These things are hard to pick.

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Newspaper marketing

Newspaper masthead violation

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Fairfax shows money is more important than a masthead in Sydney today with this Post-It type ad stuck on the front page of today’s Sydney Morning Herald. The frustration for retail newsagents is that this promotion pushes their customers away, it seeks to convert over-the-counter customers to home delivery customers. How many other channels would see a supplier use its partners to move customers away from them? Such is the lot of a newsagent.

Smart newsagents will remove the Post-It note ads and save their customers doing this at the counter or as they leave the shop.

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Newsagency challenges

Media disruption forecast in 1931

Thanks to Rob Curley, speaking at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna last week, I discovered this quote from William Allen White, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher, in 1931:

“Of course as long as man lives someone will have to fill the herald’s place. Someone will have to do the bellringer’s work. Someone will have to tell the story of the day’s news and the year’s happenings. A reporter is perennial under many names and will persist with humanity. But whether the reporter’s story will be printed in types upon a press, I don’t know. I seriously doubt it. I think most of the machinery now employed in printing the day’s, the week’s, or the month’s doings will be junked by the end of this century and will be as archaic as the bellringer’s bell, or the herald’s trumpet. New methods of communication I think will supercede the old.”

William Allen White, April 21, 1931
in a personal letter to Lyman B. Kellogg

White is right. How we access news and information will change. That it is published will not. This is why the goals of publishers do not match those of their distribution network. We are in different businesses. We must understand that if we, newsagents, are to make our own future. Not today or tomorrow but sometime soon our network will lose its value and, I suspect, be cut loose. We must pursue new customer traffic generating models for the future while ensuring the maximum return from the newspaper generated traffic we enjoy in the meantime.

The best connection I can see with the next generation of news and information distribution is through mobile access recharge. These are transactions of fractional value compared to newspaper sales. Today, we make between 18% and 25% on the sale of a newspaper and 5% on the sale of mobile device recharge. I’d expect the mobile device recharge to fall to 3% within the next year. While recharge generates traffic such customers are not loyal and we cannot therefore rely on them for traffic. So, in reality, mobile recharge is no replacement for newspapers.

Core to our challenge is that our channel was created by publishers. For our entire history we have looked to publishers to lead us by providing new products and partnering with us in their own innovations. This cannot continue given that mobile and other non-print distribution models do not require out network. Hence our need to find our own future.

I’ll have more to say on this at a future time. For now, I wanted to share the prescient quote from William Allen White.

Source: Rob Curley, VP New Products development, Washington Post, Newsweek Interactive.

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Media disruption

Fairfax cashing in on digital success

fairfax-ifra.JPGMike van Niekerk, Editor in Chief Online of Fairfax Media, delivered an impressive presentation called Cashing in on Digital Success at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna which ended Friday. It was impressive not only in demonstrating how to leverage excellent revenue from a popular and respected news site but also in the numbers presented as the table on the left shows. The full slideshow presentation is available online at the conference website. Van Niekerk demonstrated the many ways Fairfax is able to generate revenue beyond the traditional banner ads. He listed examples of rich media, over the page, half page, leader board, TVCs and sponsored links and went on to say that their problem was lack of inventory.

What I would like to see from Fairfax and the other publishers who presented at the conference is the income and net return per employee and by capital compared to the print operation. Given that publishers must be driven by share price it is the return which will guide them to the tipping point where the success of the online model, with a lower cost base, forces significant contraction of the print model. Please don’t misunderstand my interest – I am not wanting to talk newspapers down but rather have a better “heads up” when considering capital expenditure related to the sale and distribution of newspapers.

As publishers like Fairfax continue to drive their online operations, newsagents, too, must aggressively pursue new traffic and revenue opportunities. Every day we continue to perform the same tasks with the same revenue model is another day lost to the changing world and to our more forward thinking competitors.

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Media disruption

Publishers plan for life after newspapers, so should newsagents

blogifra.JPGAs the IFRA Beyond the Printed Word conference wound to an end this afternoon in Vienna I was left with more questions than when the conference began. Publishers I talked with see a rapidly approaching cliff in terms of print sales and ad revenue and some are rushing to find replacement revenue. Some openly say that the paid (over the counter or subscription) newspaper as we know it will be dead, in Europe at least, in a matter of years and will be replaced with an entirely new premium print model. They are the early adopters of new models. They are balanced with others who are yet to treat an online presence other than a poor cousin to the print edition.

Back to the questions I arrived with: Is there a common strategy being adopted by publishers to find sustainable online revenue? Who is doing it well? Will online provide the revenue the shareholders in publishing firms are used to? Do the publishers get it that they are no longer newspaper publishers but, rather, media companies? Is there a place for the current distribution system (newsagents) in their thinking about the future? Do publishers really understand the Internet? Is there a revenue model which can work?

In hindsight the questions were naive in that this is all very new and publishers are learning as they go.

I saw heard about some excellent initiatives – Naples News is one, demonstrating what a newspaper with a circulation of 50,000 can achieve. What they are dong is way advanced on any Australian news site. They created this within a year. Core to their success was them taking the online move seriously from the top down and driving change. Check out their restaurant reviews and sports scores – yeah, the sports side of the side is truly amazing. The power available to the reader makes them the expert thanks to smart organisation of data.

The conference is proof that publishers the world over are taking the online challenge seriously and that print circulation marketing today is more about delaying rapid decline than achieving growth. I know there are publisher executives in Australia who disagree with me. Let’s check in in a year, two years and five years and see if I am right. If we follow the US and European examples sales will fall. However, I accept that our marketplace is different so who really knows when the inevitable change will hit. The keys are broadband take up, lower cost wireless devices and peer pressure. My plea to Australian newspaper publisher executives is – don’t get newsagents investing beyond what is absolutely necessary in and chasing paid circulation growth. Newsagents themselves need to ensure that every capital investment is for their future and not just to help publishers tread water.

Newsagents are middlemen. This makes us servants. We are not part of any publisher’s online strategy. I’m okay with that. Publishers need to do what is right for their shareholders. For our part, newsagents need to see the future and act now. We need to break out of being middlemen. We need to get smart about online. We need new revenue streams and they need this now for it will take years to change the habits of consumers.

Just as publishers have come to conferences like Beyond the Printed Word, so, too, should newsagents congregate and discuss their life after print. This is the biggest challenge in the 120 years our channel has existed.

While I am leaving the conference with more questions than when I arrived I have a better understanding of how publishers see the online opportunity and some of the strategies being employed and for that I am grateful.

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Citizen Journalism

What do 16 year olds think of online newspaper sites?

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It’s a brave conference which gets 16 year olds on stage to critique newspaper websites. That’s what happened this morning at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna. This team of bright 16 years shared their views, warts and all. Here is a selection of their comments:

Ads get in the way of content. They don’t like clicking on a video and having to watch an ad before the video. (You could hear the gasp when they said this.)

Pop up ads are annoying.

Most banner ads are not appealing.

They don’t like sites with too much colour, too much animation or swirling fonts.

Sites need to be easier to navigate.

It is frustrating having to register to get the content you need.

As soon as you are sent to another site, when you click a link, they quit.

Having a dating service on a news site is degrading. It’s useless.

They have a preference for proper news sites as opposed to citizen journalism.

Sites chasing young people should be designed by young people – they can tell when a 40 year old is trying to design young.

Not much interest in using mobile phones to access news. (more mutterings from the audience given many are playing in this space.)

I can’t do the hour long presentation justice here.

Some key take-aways for me were that peer pressure drives site traffic. When asked if they would switch to another social media site most of the 16 year old panel said no unless their friends switched. The big surprise was their strong reaction of advertising and their dislike for paying for anything. This is a huge challenge for any online content site chasing this demographic.

How does this connect with Australian newsagents? Well, we’re chasing this market and since they are buying fewer newspapers than the generation before them, their insights will help determine what we need to do in-store to be attractive to them.

This was an excellent session, most invaluable.

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Citizen Journalism

Newspaper publishers chasing web 2.0 and a revenue model

ifra.JPGI’m at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna along with 450 representatives of newspaper publishers from 41 countries. Everyone is here to talk about how newspapers can make money from online plays and retain (and even grow) shareholder value in this rapidly changing world.

Day one has been kind of a show-and-tell event with publishers presenting what they have done. For me, the most interesting presentation today was by Mikal Rohde of Schibsted Sok AS in Norway. In just over a year the Sesam search engine developed and launched by this publisher has become the hit of Norway. In a globalisation sense it gives me heart that there are some who can beat giants. They are playing in a space few other publishers play in yet it is a logical place for a publisher because what is a search engine but an aggregator of content?

From an Australian newsagent perspective, what is most important about day one is what has not been discussed that much – that print is old news. Some people on the floor talk as if print is already buried. No, it won’t go away but, boy, will it go through some changes. Everyone at the conference is focused on moving the publisher brands born in print to the online world and while many speakers discuss how their online strategy is supporting their print model, the reality is that profit will determine how this plays out.

Newsagents need to understand that newspapers will not be the traffic driver to our retail businesses in five years that they are today and even less so in ten years. This is why what we spend on our infrastructure must change not only to draw new traffic but also to de-emphasise newspapers and to not provide them the most expensive real-estate in our stores.

I was surprised at what some companies have achieved with very small teams. Some excellent sites and services have been established with teams of ten or less – in businesses employing thousands in their print operation. I was also surprised that most of the companies so far are talking about almost single online strategies. Okay, these single sites have depth. I would have thought that is they were looking to replace a significant portion of print revenue they would need many online strategies. Connecting with an online consumer is not a once a day event to get the purchase and leave them be as is the case with a newspaper. For many, online consumption is 24/7 while with others it is many times a day through many channels – hence the need for publishers to break out from behind the masthead and connect through these channels.

Back to Norway, I like that Schibsted has created their own search engine. The control this provides will prove invaluable to their future.

Live coverage is available in part as a demonstration of some of the technologies on show.

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Media disruption

Smart stationery retailing in London

ryman.JPGWhile newsagents are retreating from the high street, stationery outlets are strong. Take Ryman for example. They have an excellent range, well laid out and provide a clear value proposition, a mix of price and service, to the browser. Sure they are part of a big group. It doesn’t feel like it in the store. For example, I visited at least ten WH Smith stores (newspapers, magazines, greeting cards, books and stationery) and received consistently mediocre service. The employees looked unhappy and acted unhappy. (I stood in a line for 5 minutes, got to the counter and was greeted with yes please – geez, no smile, no greeting). I visited three Ryman stores and found the opposite. Happy employees who seem to actually want to serve you.

Standing in one of the Ryman stores I got to thinking about how we do stationery in my newsagency and many of Australia’s newsagencies. At Ryman I feel better serviced through range and price. The store encourages browsing. Yet it’s small – certainly the ones I went to. Their Christmas display was bold and enjoyable. Then I think of stationery in my shop – it’s cold, unappealing and reminiscent of work. The Ryman approach makes stationery, work, enjoyable. This is what got me browsing the store. I walked out and sat in a coffee shop (drinking bad London coffee) and made notes, plenty of notes.

Many newsagents are getting stationery wrong, me included. We get it wrong on range, theatre and the value proposition. Even though stationery is one department newsagents fully control, few of us exert that control. It’s the poor cousin to newspapers, lotteries, magazines and greeting cards. In many newsagencies the range and merchandising approach has not changed in more than 20 years. We need to be proud and bold stationers. We need to leverage our geographic asset better than we do today.

These Ryman stores are a real eye-opener. They have demonstrated how to do stationery well in a small space.

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Newsagency challenges

Free newspapers in London make selling newspapers tougher

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It’s hard to walk any of London’s major streets in the afternoon without being offered a copy of the london paper – the free newspaper launched by News International eight weeks ago. Strategically located distributors (often outside a supermarket or convenience store) stand next to the trademark purple umbrella and thrust the newspaper in front of anyone walking within a few feet of their position. Today’s 40 page edition feels nothing like the free commuter papers I am used to – MX in Melbourne and Sydney. Indeed, comparing it page by page with the Evening Standard (50 pence) it’s a very competitive offering. Sure it provides more celebrity and fashion coverage than hard news but the key news stories are well covered. Mind you, the Standard had its fare share of celebrity coverage.

I also picked up a copy of London Lite, a free daily launched ten weeks ago by Associated Newspapers and distributed throughout the City. It’s from the publishers of the Evening Standard. London Lite today is 48 pages long. It shares key stories with the Standard and in a couple of instances today, provided more detail than its paid for stable-mate. Maybe I am missing something but I don’t get the strategy of giving away a product which is 75% of your paid-for product – unless it’s an advertising play, assuring advertisers of a certain number of eyeballs you can only deliver through a free version. London Lite is playing in the user generated content space and carries some content provided by readers.

These free London newspapers are very different to MX, the only capital city free daily in Australia. They read as if they are targeting a broader demographic than that of MX.
By creating such good free offerings, publishers are presenting a product which must cannibalise the market for newspapers with a cover price.

As one who relies on consumer habits to purchase newspapers I’d be unhappy if free newspapers like these two from London came to Australia. However, I suspect it is only a matter of time. People don’t have the time for bigger newspapers. When sales are flat or fall I am sure publishers will use the learnings from London and the many other cities where free daily newspapers are a key part of their consumer offering.

Newsagents I talk to are not concerned about MX. They see it as not competing with anything they offer. The two free newspapers in London which I have seen today would compete and that’s what newsagents need to be aware of and, maybe, plan for.

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Media disruption
Trending Articles

Fairfax changes approach to TV Guide, disrespects newsagents

Published on April 20, 2011

What do you think of the Powerball changes?

Published on February 16, 2018

IPS releases new magazine contracts

Published on June 21, 2011