Tactical display

We have placed the new cookbook from ACP, the cook’s garden, with our high volume weeklies to drive impulse business.  This is a very different cookbook from ACP.  I expect it to work well as an impulse item – hence the premium placement.  We also have stock in the ACP impulse unit at the counter as well as in our regular cookbook section.

I like the inclusion of apack of tomato seeds on the cover.  I also like that this cookbook is more of a garden to the table book than your usual cookbook.  The timing is good with Spring not far away.

We are have tactically placed the latest issue of Prevention magazine (out yesterday) between New Idea and Australian Women’s Weekly for the next week to drive impulse purchases.  We also have Prevention in its usual area with women’s health related titles as well as on the dance floor of the store. Our obsession with basket size is working with growth achieved in July 2010 compared to July 2009.

Zoo Weekly is $1.95 this week and that means that driving impulse purchases of the title is easier than usual.  We have stock next to our main newspaper stand as well as the usual location for the title.  The stand has been deliberately set so that picking up the magazine is easy for customers reaching to purchase the Herald Sun.

While I am not a fan of these cover price discounts, I understand that they play in getting infrequent customers sampling the title.  I want to do everything possible to sell out as early as possible in the week.

We have the latest issue of MasterChef magazine on display at our newspaper stand as well as with weeklies and in the food section.  The tactical placement next to the newspaper stand works best for us, especially in the first two weeks.

While MasterChef magazine has established regular customers, being in a shopping centre we see plenty of impulse business.

We are chasing extra stock expecting this issue to be hot.

We are promoting the latest issue of Woman’s Day on the back of a display unit which faces customers as they leave our busiest magazine aisle.  This placement is tactical since we have food titles in this aisle and the cover story relates to the high-rating Masterchef TV show.  We will leave this display up until tomorrow morning when we will be short of display space given the volume of titles coming in.  Click on the image for a bigger version.

We are finding that Jamie magazine, the food magazine built around Jamie Oliver, works  best as an impulse item in each of my newsagencies.  While we run the title in our food category, it actually works best when located in a pocket in the middle of our weekly titles – as shown in the photo.  Here, it is purchased on impulse, extending the shopping basket and driving good value for the business.

We have tried Jamie with newspapers, at the counter and even in a food display at the front of the store.  It is in with weeklies where it works best – for us.

We have placed Men’s Health on a stand just in front of AFL card albums at one of our sales counters.  This placement for the weekend is tactical because of the number of men we have shopping with their kids and buying AFL cards.  Money magazine did okay here following the same strategy.

we know that Men’s Health sells well when promoted with newspapers.  We wanted to discover other locations where it can work as an impulse purchase.  We also have a good display in the usual location for the magazine.

We are ignoring the opportunity to be rewarded for a pretty display and instead are running with a tactical placement of the latest issue of Australian Good Taste at a busy counter point.  I expect this will work far better for us than a billboard type display elseweher in-store.  We are checking numbers so we know how many we sell from this counter position versus the stock in ur food section.

We are promoting MOJO music magazine at the counter this weekend.  I figured that the AC/DC cover and accompanying CD might attract impulse purchases from our weekend shoppers.  It is a simple display – I am letting the magazine cover do all the work.  We put MOJO on the counter Friday and will cahnge the display Monday morning.

Given the sales success of Paranormal, Fortean Times, New Dawn, Uncensored and similar titles, I know that a magazine cover with a suggestion of fear sells well.  This is why I put the latest issue of Scientific American on our main newspaper stand.  While the cover story is not the  kind of story you would see in more tabloid magazines, the cover illustration taps into a fear of what may happen in the future.  Yes, it is a long shot!  I am hoping that the cover image is enough to get people picking up the title who would otherwise not have noticed it.  We have to try these things – we are magazine specialists after all.

We are pitching Money magazine in an air stand at the counter, next to our current ACP cookbook display.

This is a different approach for Money magazine, we have recently been relying on in-location displays.  On seeing the cover yesterday morning I thought it was worth trying near the counter, especially on the weekend when we have more males shopping than during the week – it seems that way at least.

The display itself is nothing really, a couple of colour copies of the cover.  The trick is the stand itself – it places the magazine at a level which can be easily reached and which will be noticed by shoppers at the counter.

We are promoting the latest issue of Prevention magazine next to our main newspaper stand.  We are still using the display unit provided by Pacific magazines when the magazine launched last year.  We also have Prevention located in our women’s health section.  But is this newspaper position which works best for us for this title.  Right through the month too – we continue to sell copies of Prevention right through the last week of the on-sale.  We flip the position from the right to the left side of the newspaper stand – to combat store blindness.

We have refreshed the ACP Magazines basket builder stand next to our busiest counter position. We have selected four ACP cookbook titles for promotion here for the next week.

We know that Slow Cooker will work because of past success.

Moroccan food is the new title out yesterday. With the surge in sales of tagines I’d expect this title to work very well for us. I may be wrong but I think this title has the potential to come close to the success of the runaway success Slow Cooker title.

Here is some information which ACP did not tell you which may help you understand the opportunity for the new Moroccan title:

• Moroccan cooking is the new foodie ‘thing’.
• Tagines, used to create many of the dishes, are selling like hot cakes in homewares stores.
• The keyword tagine is the subject of 110,000 searches a month currently in Australia using Google. That is a quarter of all global searched.
• The keyword moroccan is searched 368,000 times a month in Australia using Google.
• Moroccan food is delicious!

The in-store promotion opportunities for the Moroccan title are as good as for the slow cooker: sell tagines, do some cooking, start a recipe club, sell other Moroccan recipe books.  Create a niche, get known for it and watch your sales grow.

If you don’t have room to feature a range of the new titles, focus on the new Moroccan title.  It should work in a wide variety of situations.

Based on the questions from customers yesterday, the latest issue of Donna Hay kids magzine (on sale yesterday) looks set to be a huge success. We are pushing the title hard with a great display out the front of the store, facing into the mall. We will run this display for a week. We also have Donna Hay kids magazine displayed in our food section as well as in one pocket in the column of food titles in with our weeklies

I made the decision to run the front of store display as well as our in-store co-location strategy on the basis of the attractive cover and the strong Donna Hay brand. We know from past experience that sales will reward the effort.