In July 2005, Uganda’s leading newspaper publisher, the New Vision group, launched the Super Sales Booster, a promotional campaign aimed at the paper’s sales agents, which offered prizes ranging from cash to new motorbikes. This promotion sought to increase sales, decrease the rate of returns and combat the problem of newspaper renting. The initiative was a phenomenal success; more than 200 sales agents participated in the year-long campaign, and the newspaper group boosted revenues significantly for all of its six titles. RAP 21 spoke to Tom Wasswa, circulation manager for the group about the promotion.
“We wanted our sales agents to employ innovative strategies. They were encouraged to open new sales outlets in previously poorly supplied areas of the country, to explore subscription opportunities, to more closely supervise their vendors and to be more active in giving market feedback”, Wasswa said.
The Super Sales Booster promotion concerned all of New Vision’s six titles, not just their flagship newspaper, The New Vision. 250 agents throughout Uganda were enticed with prizes to increase their sales, to improve their vendor and market supervision through creative selling, to control their returns within budgeted levels and to improve their display of New Vision products.
The prizes on offer ranged from a first prize of five million Ugandan shillings (2,200 Euro) in cash to four motorbikes for the runners-up and bicycles and polo shirts for other high sellers. The winning agent, Araali Kwebiiha, increased his sales by 300 copies per day, improved his collection by 5 percent and increased his number of sales outlets by 50.
“We wanted to improve sales, collection, and market supervision as well as expand our distribution network further”, said Wasswa describing the aim of this latest promotion.
The results of the promotion were impressive. The New Vision increased its sales by 553 copies each day, as opposed to the targeted increase of 200 copies per day. Its sister publication, the Luanda-language paper Bukedde, increased its sales by an astounding 2,713 copies per day, 2,100 more than its target of 600 copies per day. “In the evaluation of objectives against actual results, yes it was an effective promotional strategy”, said the marketing manager.
The Super Sales Booster also sought to tackle the problem of newspaper renting, a practice which involves lending newspapers to multiple readers at a fraction of their cover price. “This phenomenon is partly due to poor supervision of vendors by their agents”, Wasswa said. The marketing manager concedes that the problem is largely an economic one: “People want to read our newspaper, but they cannot afford to buy it”. The main problem this phenomenon causes is a loss of revenue, resulting from high levels of copy returns: “hiring or renting of newspapers is becoming a serious problem and in carrying out this promotion we wanted to improve market supervision by agents to minimise it”.
Throughout the year long promotion the rate of returns decreased significantly for all of the group’s titles; The New Vision experienced a 2 percent drop, The Sunday Vision a 1 percent drop, Bukedde a 3 percent drop, Orumuri a 4 percent drop, Etop a 5 percent drop and Rupiny a 7 percent drop.
The significant increase in sales has permitted New Vision not only to retain their traditional advertisers, such as telecommunications companies and the government, but also to attract new ones, such as supermarkets. The newspaper company’s increase in advertising and sales revenue has led to an estimated increase in overall revenue of roughly 150 million Ugandan shillings (65,000 Euro) per month, a truly impressive figure, particularly when compared to the promotion’s estimated total cost of 25 million shillings (10,000 Euro).
While the Super Sales Booster was aimed largely at sales agents, they were not the only ones targeted by this promotional campaign. In many areas The New Vision group also worked directly with vendors: “The emphasis was on creating ownership”, Wasswa said, “We wanted vendors to know that if agents won, they won too”. Thus in many districts if an agent won a prize, a celebration was held for all the vendors to congratulate them for their respective contributions. Readers were also kept aware of the existence and progress of the promotion through newspaper articles and picture pages.
While another Ugandan publisher attempted a similar promotional campaign, the New Vision’s was the only one which enjoyed real success; “ our planning was much better”, Wasswa said, “Our competitor did not take the time to plan with its agents how its promotion should be run”. New Vision, on the contrary, was very careful to include the agents in their four-month planning process. “Agents were consulted during planning to see how they thought the promotion should be run, and what prizes they thought should be put on offer”, Wasswa said. Furthermore agents were informed of the actual launch of the promotion during the newspaper group’s annual seminar and were kept up to date with the progress of the promotion through quarterly newsletters.
As for the future of the Super Sales Booster promotion, Wasswa said “It has been agreed we will run it again this year”. Although the promotional strategies will remain largely unchanged, the circulation manager noted that a more critical look would be taken at the ratio of actual sales to projected sales and at the success of market supervision. Equally, emphasis will be put on the importance of creative sales techniques, particularly in terms of finding new sales locations. Waswa believed the Super Sales Booster promotion will continue for the foreseeable future, but the emphasis will be on adaptability: “The promotion could change, depending on the results it produces and on the feelings of the agents involved”.