Sunday Inserts and Supplements are Dead! Long Live Sunday Inserts and Supplements!
All of us "industry insiders" know that newspapers are going out of business, paper coupons are history (not withstanding a brief respite due to our recent economic travails), and shopper promotions are going online, mobile, or in-store. One thing we can say with absolute certainty is that advertising via Sunday inserts and supplements in local newspapers is not the way of the future! So say we all.
Not so fast. If this is all true, then can someone tell me why the most recent Sunday edition of my local paper (The Palm Beach Post, December 6th, 2009) included a stack of inserts approximately an inch high with offerings from 23 retailers, 3 manufacturers, plus two multi-sponsored coupon supplements?
Retailers with inserts included CompUSA, OfficeMax, Sears, BrandsMart USA, Total Wine, Firestone, Sports Authority, Target, Office Depot, World Market, JCPenney (2), BestBuy, Bealls, Michaels, Mattress X-Press, Kmart, Publix, Walgreens, Toys R Us, Radio Shack, Kohl's, Macy's, and CVS. Manufacturers included DirecTV, Sony, and Dell. And, the coupon supplements included offerings from an astounding 51 manufacturers, 9 retailers, 9 restaurant chains, and 6 service companies.
Recently, at an industry conference, an acquaintance said to me, "You still subscribe to a newspaper?," as if I were still guilty of still using an abacus, or maybe a stone tablet. Living in an area of the country with many retirees and golf courses, maybe my newspaper is an anomaly. My gut feeling, however, is that we may be too quick to write off traditional advertising and promotional methods in our RetailWire discussions. Perhaps this is due to the tendency of our enlightened readers to know about the latest and greatest high-tech methods for reaching consumers and shoppers.
I guess the easy answer is that retailers and manufacturers are just biding time, using these old-fashioned methods until their day of reckoning comes, and the powerhouses of the new methods emerge. But, for a dying industry, newspaper inserts and supplements still seem to have a lot of life left in them.
Discussion Questions: Are newspaper inserts still an 800 pound gorilla when it comes to consumer promotion? With so many new and emerging methods to target consumer promotions, why are so many blue-chip retailers and manufacturers still using old-fashioned newspaper circulars and supplements?