Click on the image to play the first viral ad we have loaded at YouTube to promote our Find It online classifieds site. We’re planning several ads to get people visiting our site during its beta phase. The Borat ad was made completely in house. Given that we don’t have the budget of News, Fairfax, PBL or Telstra, we have to find more creative ways to get people engaging with our offering. We hope to launch our second ad mid next week.
We have launched a new design for our Find It online classifieds model. The new design is very web 2.0. Clean. Easy to navigate. Easy on the eye. All ads are currently free as we are in beta. When we do charge in three months time more than 60% of our categories will remain free. For example, most of what is listed on eBay will always be free at Find It and these free ads can include photos, video and sound – free too.
Newsagents are our partners and will be our only retail payment point. More than 1,000 newsagents are part of the Find It network. This week they are handing our 500,000 bookmarks as part of our promotion of Find It.
This is a David vs. Goliath challenge. We’re small and have little content to offer. Our success will depend in part on how much newsagents engage and promote Find It to their customers to attract content.
FPC has Village Voice and created what they claim is “a one-stop-shop for local community information and a unique forum for citizen journalism”.
The key is engagement. In the US and Europe there has been more success at citizen engagement initiatives. Here in Australia we’re slower to engage. Their approach to getting the stories from readers online is old – I’ve seen sites in the US far more advanced. Likewise with free classifieds. It seems simple is free and complex (?) is not. Those issues aside, Village Voice is a welcome initiative in the changing media offering.
I’d like to see newsagents play a role in facilitating citizen engagement with news outlets – our network of stores could become soapbox points where people submit stories, photos etc for inclusion in sites like Village Voice.
Two recent clips at YouTube demonstrate the power of this medium above more filtered news outlets. First up is the video of the Michael Richards’ (AKA Kramer on Seinfeld) racial dummy spit. Then there is the video of an Iranian-American U.S. citizen being repeatedly tazered by security officers at UCLA. The Richards video achieved over 500,000 viewings in 24 hours and the tazer footage achieved 425,000 viewings in 6 days. In both cases YouTube viewers see the story as it happened. They don’t rely on filtering by journalists and editors. While such filtering can be appropriate in many instances, with these two stories the video is better than any reporting. I want to see the raw material so I can make up my own mind with stories like these.
That such footage is so readily available is educating a generation to trust unedited content rather than the masthead. This is a challenge for mainstream media and all who rely on it for income.
Today both Fairfax major dailies let advertising control their mastheads. Below is a photo of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. The money from HP must be more important than respect for the masthead. Customers hate these post it note ads.
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.
Newspapers are incredibly profitable enterprises.
Tony Hale, CEO of The Newspaper Works – a coalition of newspaper publishers created earlier this year to talk up newspapers – was speaking earlier today at the Media and Broadcasting Congress in Sydney. In his speech, Hale flippantly and without real context derided respected commentators including Jay Rosen and Michael Porter. An easy target was anyone talking down newspapers. Hale reminded us of Bill Gates’ prediction in the 1990s that newspaper and magazine publishers would close. He relied on Gates being wrong to ‘prove’ that today’s naysayers will also be wrong.
Hale took us through an amazing set of numbers covering circulation, readership and advertising. He left off cover price – I guess because in Australia we have seen below inflation rises. While Hale indicated that circulation growth came primarily from the free commuter dailies, he did not present data to address problem the migration of classifieds online. By not talking about this he ignored the elephant in the room.
Hale will need to lift his game if he is to get advertisers believing that newspapers have as bright a future as he suggests. Making fun of commentators may get some laughs but it will not address the impact of the Internet on the print product. While Australian publishers are dong well with their online models, significant costs in their businesses are tied to print and this will have to be addressed as sales of the print product in its present form decays.
As one who relies on newspapers for traffic and revenue for my businesses and for enjoyment to read, I would prefer Hale to take a smarter and, dare I say, more accurate, approach to talking up the medium – especially when speaking at a conference so focused on new media.
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.
Light blogging the next two days as I am attending the 2006 Media and Broadcasting Congress in Sydney.
Irish Echo is the worst newspaper according to many newsagents. We lose money on this every week of the year bar one – the week of St Patrick’s Day. While it is supplied on a sale or return basis, Irish Echo takes up real-estate and requires labour – these are costs to newsagencies. Either newsagents need to be paid a handling fee or they are provided much better terms. The current situation disrespects newsagents.
BRW has two special issues and it’s weekly issue on sale at the moment and it’s confusing customers. In regular magazine fixturing it is impossible to tell the issues apart – hence the confusion among customers.
While full face display fixes this, few newsagents would have the space for a full face display of BRW nor could they justify this based on the cost of retail real-estate. Cover designed at BRW need to take this fixturing into account with future special editions.
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.
The publisher of The New Yorker has released their entire archive, February, 1925 – April, 2006, on a palm-sized portable Hitachi hard drive. 4,000 issues. The cost is US$299. While plenty of magazine content has a shelf life, there are some titles which come to mind which led themselves to similar packaging of archives. Even the weeklies could put together packages of content based on a subject. Of course I would like it if such archive packages were available through newsagents.
Source: meika loofs samorzewski
This is a story you won’t read in the newspapers since it’s about newspapers and unsafe workplace practices resulting from often overweight product.
The findings of an ergonomic assessment into the handling of newspapers by newsagents in South Australia make for concerning reading. According to the report, current work practices are unsafe. Newsagents in South Australia are yet to be given a copy of the report and therefore may not be aware that they and their employees may be engaged in unsafe work practices. The key ergonomic risk factors identified in the report exist, in my view, in Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria in addition to South Australia where the research was undertaken.
The professionally prepared report documents unsafe work practices which stem, in part, from having to handle heavy newspapers. Any newspaper above .6 kilogram in weight is considered to be heavy. Consider this quote from the Executive Summary:
The Results section of this report (page 10) has outlined significant ergonomic risk factors associated with the newspaper delivery tasks. These risk factors are particularly related to dimensions of the weekend papers (Advertiser and Sunday Mail) when combined with the repetition, volume and manual handling aspects of the delivery process. In particular, there are significant risks associated with the delivery/throwing of the larger dimensioned and heavier Saturday Advertiser and Sunday Mail newspapers.
The report makes recommendations in the areas of unloading trucks, feeding wrapping machines, the loading of delivery vehicles, the weight of wrapped newspapers and the safe number of newspapers to be thrown by one person each day. But it all comes back to the weight of the newspaper and specifically, the weight of the Saturday newspaper. Section 5.2 of the report goes to the heart of the issue:
Agreement between the suppliers of the newspapers (i.e. The Advertiser) and the Australian Newsagents’ Federation about the safe task demands for the distribution of the newspapers. The current situation, in my view, is unsafe and modifications to the weight, dimensions and volume of papers distributed per person need to be reduced to provide a safe system of work.There are requirements for the performance of safe work by members of the Australian Newsagents’ Federation as per the Handling Procedures outlined in section 8.5 of the Territorial Distribution Agency Agreement where it states a Distributor must ensure that its employees, contractors and agents engaged in the performance of this Agreement, including, but not limited to, the handling, wrapping, strapping or delivery of Publications:
(a) perform their duties in a manner which does not expose them to any risk to their health, safety and welfare;
(b) do not cause any injury to themselves or to others, and There is also, in my opinion, and as outlined in the South Australian Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Regulations (1995) an obligation for the manufacturers of the newspapers, News Corporation in this case, to provide a product that is safe to handle by the members of the Australian Newsagents’ Federation.
The Australian Newsagents’ Federation, which commissioned the report, received it from David Nery four months ago. I understand from the ANF website that it is currently seeking advice from a QC experienced in the OH&S area.
Workplace practices are not something one ought to spend too long thinking about. Either current practices are safe or they are not. If they are not safe, safe practices ought to be implemented immediately and in an economically sustainable way.
Since the weight of the newspaper is at the heart of the OH&S issue here, newspaper publishers will need to be involved in the solution. They control the weight of the product, the contractual terms under which newsagents operate and the fees newsagents may charge for the home delivery service. The fee will be an issue if, for example, what is currently a single wrap and throw for a Saturday Advertiser becomes two wraps and two throws. The fee is equally an issue if heavy newspapers continue to be thrown in one roll but with fewer throws per person per day as recommended in the report. The Nery report recommends that the average daily newspaper throws per person be reduced, because of newspaper weight, from 400-600 to 200-300. This is not economically viable for newsagents under the current delivery fee structure.
The ANF and newspaper publishers ought to provide newsagents with advice this week on how to immediately address the workplace situation. The Nery report contains some excellent and easy to implement advice in product handling. Publishers ought to also advise newsagents about how they plan to address the issue of overweight newspapers in the future to facilitate safe work practices. The solution begins with appropriately informing those who may be involved in unsafe work practices and advising changes which must be implemented immediately to ensure a safe work environment. Advice must also include an appropriate financial solution – ensuring that newsagents are not financially disadvantaged by oversized newspapers.
If newsagencies were unionised this report would be the subject of strike action. You’d be watching stories on TV current affairs shows of unionists picketing publishers in pursuit of a safer workplace. Newsagencies are not unionised. Most of the heavy work is done by newsagents themselves or by people too happy for the pay to be concerned about a heavy newspaper.
Publishers, newsagents and the ANF collectively have an obligation to urgently ensure that newspaper delivery practices are safe. Life is too short to risk injury because of a heavy newspaper.
For the record, I note that this report was not provided by anyone connected with any newsagent association. I make that point because I expect that there will be an accusation that the report was leaked to me by one of the state newsagent associations to get it into the public domain. My source is not under any confidentiality obligation and has given me this material so that newsagents can be informed of the need to improve work practices to better deal with heavy newspapers.
The report has been prepared by David Nery B.Sc. Hons. (Flinders), M.Sc. (London). He is principal of Nery Ergonomic Services. A search on Google quickly demonstrates his credentials in the area of industrial ergonomics.
Courtesy of Lost Remote is this story by Cory Bergman about a smart new service from Google for the US marketplace. When searching for a business you get to connect with them by phone – easily. The service is free for callers and the businesses. Google is on a win win with this. Who needs the Yellow Pages? Who needs flyers in the letter box promoting local businesses? Who needs local newspaper classifieds?
Sales of our exclusive newsXpress calendar are strong. With this calendar offering we cut out a middleman, improved margin, delivered an excellent calendar for a lower price and setup marketing initiatives for 2007 – the calendar includes 24 coupons which customers will bring back to our shop (and other newsXpress outlets) through 2007 to redeem for offers. Being exclusive to newsXpress, means our stores have a valuable point of difference in our calendar offering – rather than relying of suppliers to trim margin, we have, as a unified group, negotiated commercially and with considerable success.
This is a new approach for newsagents – it’s what we MUST do for our future. We need to exert more control over our range, improve margin and branch out into new areas which provide the traffic necessary to deliver a bright future. Our existing suppliers are not going to deliver the growth and margin we need – certainly not with exclusive product. If we don’t want to become general stores we must control more of what we sell. Hence the welcome first steps this month by newsXpress.
Disclosure – I am a shareholder in and Director of newsXpress Pty Ltd
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.
As I have covered at my Tower Blog, we are close to finalising the Tower Systems 2006 Fast 3 Awards. The Fast 3 are the three fastest growing newsagents using our software. Through the awards we are encouraging newsagents to compete with themselves – to enter they print a report which compares sales over a ten month period in 2006 with the same period in 2005. We measure on unit sales. The three with the most growth win. With over 1,300 newsagents using our software today we are drawing from a considerable entrant pool.
The Fast 3 Awards gets newsagents interacting with their software. They underscore the importance of competing with yourself and reward growth regardless of the size of the business. Entrants are vying for prestige more than a financially rewarding prize as this is more about the process than anything else.
There is no comparable growth focused award for newsagents.
New Idea sales today (up to 6pm) are more than 15 times our usual Friday sales and WHO up 75%. Bearing in mind that WHO usually comes out today and New Idea Monday the results are very good.
Here’s the display we have done in store to support New Idea hitting the market three days early with the Belinda Emmett feature. The sign in the middle announces our 25 cent per copy sold gift to the McGrath Foundation.
Interesting to see the Ashes Action Pin Collection already listed at eBay even though we’re only two days into the Herald Sun promotion.
This is the entrance to the Government owned Post Shop opposite my newsagency. To get to the line to buy stamps or post a parcel you first need to navigate the soft toy speed hump. It’s there right in the entrance. I have been thinking about these soft toys and how the executives at Australia Post con the government that they are somehow connected with providing postal services then it dawned on me – they are the their lucky charms. They bring luck to the house in which they live. By luck, I mean on time mail. Buy one of these Australia Post soft toys and your mail will be on time. This means Express Post will arrive the next day!
WHO, out tomorrow, has a cover story about Belinda Emmett who lost her fight with cancer last weekend. The publishers have announced a donation of 10 cents from every copy to the McGrath Foundation. New Idea is publishing three days early and will be out tomorrow with a Belinda Emmett cover story and 10-page special tribute. Pacific Magazines, New Idea publisher, is donating $15,000 from the New Idea Breast Cancer Fund to the McGrath Foundation. From our newsagency we will be donating 25 cents from each copy of WHO and New Idea we sell to the McGrath Foundation – their focus is in raising funds to fund specialist breast care nurses primarily in rural areas without current access to them.
On September 26 I wrote to, among others, Federal Minister for Small Business, Fran Bailey about Australia Post and the unfair advantage their Government-owned Australia Post stores had and how they were specifically targeting small businesses, specifically newsagencies. In my letter I said, in part:
When farmers talk of the impact of droughts the government steps in with assistance. When auto makers talk of the impact of cheap imports the government steps in and helps. When newsagents talk of the impact of Australia Post the government ignores us.
Australia Post is our drought. For many years now it has been draining newsagencies of revenue.
Yesterday, I received this reply from the Minister. While I appreciate the response, it is meaningless. The letter says, in part:
The Australian Government recognises the importance of newsagencies in our communities and is committed to creating a fair trading environment for all small businesses.
It also makes the claim that Australia Post is permitted to:
…carry on any business or activity that is incidental or relates to the supply of postal services.
This morning I have responded with this letter to the Minister. How can the Government consider Music CDs, Chess sets, Radios, Puzzles and Cookbooks to meet the criteria under the Act? Why will the Government not take steps to have the Australia Post breach of its obligations under the Act investigated?
The Government is conflicted beyond its ownership and regulation of Australia Post. As my letter to the Minister today says:
For decades, newsagents were profitable while they had a monopoly on the distribution of newspapers and magazines. In 1999 the Government facilitated the deregulation of the distribution of newspapers and magazines. As we have lost the benefits of exclusive traffic as a result of this deregulation, Australia Post has increased its range of newsagent type lines and thereby very successfully leveraged its continued exclusivity to more effectively compete with us.
I am not calling for a wind-back of newspaper and magazine deregulation. Rather, I am calling for the Government to get out of the business of competing with independent small business.
I was in a Government owned Post Office yesterday and was confronted with a big display of plush product – soft toys. Where in the Act are provisions permitting Australia Post to enter the soft toy space? Their entry into this category this Christmas season will affect sales in my newsagency.
I am disappointed that the Government will not even for a moment contemplate that they are wrong on this and that the actions of their Corporation are harming a small business channel which is vital to the community.
Yes, Sir Humphrey Appleby is alive and well and writing letters for the Government.
We sent this flyer out to 20,000 houses around of shopping centre as one part of our pre-Christmas marketing strategy. It was delivered with the local newspaper – ensuring it gets into letterboxes. It’s the first time we have promoted our Magazine Club Card promotion using anything other than our over-the-counter pitch. We had to do something since we closed our second outlet for a month while we moved and built an entirely new store. In addition to these flyers we are creating bolder in-store displays and undertaking several other initiatives to reinforce sales in our main shop.
The scratch ticket promotion on the second page of the brochure is working very well. Sales are up considerably. This is in part due to the flyers but more because our employees know they need to offer the up-sell otherwise we give away a free $1 ticket. There is no doubt that a low an up-sell at a newsagency counter costing no more than loose change works well. We tried this a few months ago with pens and also with chocolates. Each time it worked a treat.
The reason we closed our second shop is so we could make way for our new card and gifts shop. Considering margin and the mix of products in our centre we feel we will be better served with a differently branded card and gift shop on the lower level of the centre rather than a smaller version of our newsagency. There will be a short term loss of magazine and newspaper sales – but this flyer campaign and related activity should address that. The move is about the long term of the business.