This Week

with Frank Romano

Hi, this is Frank Romano from WhatTheyThink.com.  Today I passed through Syracuse, New York on route to Rochester, New York.  So in Syracuse, I bought a copy of the Post Standard and here in Rochester, the Democrat and Chronicle.  It is a Sunday, the day that you have all the advertising inserts in their papers.  So I went through both papers and went through all the inserts.  You can see, I have nothing better to do with my time. 

COUPONS! 

And I was curious about what was the same and what was different.  That is an Aldees in both cities and they have an insert and the prices are the same, the inserts, as far as I can tell, are exactly the same. 

Now, Tops.  Tops have a store here in Rochester, but when I looked at the one in Syracuse, it says P&C.  I think that’s a P&C.  Food and Pharmacy, but it’s exactly the same insert.  Except that as I got into it closer, for instance, Sweet Washington Bing cherries are $2.88 in Rochester but they’re $2.48 a pound in Syracuse. 

So, there are minor changes from what I can see, nothing substantial.  But –

I can tell already you’re loving this…

And they put codes at the bottom so you know that this one was for Syracuse and this one was for Rochester.  So one price change.

Then I have Rite Aid.  And I didn’t see anything different on Rite Aid from one to the other.  They seem to have the same deals going on with all their stuff, discounts, coupons, etc.  No codes as to what issue it goes into, although down at the bottom it just mentions states.  Okay. 

Okay, bear with me here.  You get to Walgreens, as you know there’s a CVS or a Walgreens on every corner nowadays.  When I was a kid it was Rexall that I recall.  But the – here again, the Walgreens' inserts are the same.  Michael’s.  Michael’s is a craft store.  No difference between theirs. 

Fascinating…

Best Buy was common to both of them, no changes that I can see in the pricing, same products that they are selling.  This is Target or Targay depending on how you want to say it.  And so, I think one side was the same, and yep, the other side was the same as well. 

Admit it.  You’re fascinated….

And again, it doesn’t mention what issues.  Normally it tells you that it’s going into certain publications. 

Now, this was interesting.  Wal-Mart.  Because Wal-mart’s everywhere, but the one for Rochester was emphasizing a different set of products.  So you had Charmin toilet paper and Gain cleaning solution and in the Syracuse one it changed from Gain to Tide for whatever reason.  And so the products are somewhat different on the Wal-Mart.  On the back part of here, they looked – no they’re different as well.  There are only two bonus offers on the one from Rochester; there are three bonus offers if you go with the Syracuse.  If you go to Syracuse, you’re not going to save any money; it looks like it’s the same about.  The Oil of Olay was $5.47, $5.47, it doesn’t change.  But they did change some of the products and moved them around here. 

This was also interesting.  This is a company that probably bundles a whole bunch of ads into one publication and the emphasis in this particular case was on Zeb’s Backyard BBQ.  But the ad on the back page was different based on the newspaper it was in. 

J.C. – I’m sorry, Red Plum, which again accumulates a number of companies into one promotion piece.  What I noticed here that was interesting is the color is different.  If you look at the skin tone on the young lady, I’m not quite certain which one did a better job, but I would say to my eye, Rochester looks better, but I don’t think they printed it. 

Wegman’s – If you’ve ever lived in Rochester, as I have, Wegman’s is the greatest supermarket on earth and so I didn’t see any changes between their two inserts. 

And then Dick’s was common.  In addition, there were this many more in Syracuse but only this many more in Rochester.  So, Syracuse is doing better.  In fact the publication is thicker, has more advertising than the Rochester publication, which is somewhat thinner.  Both of them have their little magazine.  You have U.S.A. Today and you have Parade.  I always read, Ask Marilyn.  Parade is doing a little bit better than U.S.A. Weekend, but both of them area a shadow of what they used to be.

So, why was I interested in this?  Well, I had this idea.  Why do you have to print all these things in one location and then truck them, probably halfway across the United States to bring them to the newspaper, where if you go to the newspaper plant, it’s mostly storage space for all the inserts waiting to go into issues into the future?  Why not put roll fed ink jet in newspaper plants and then print these inserts.  Because many of these are done weeks, maybe even months in advance because of the scheduling necessary to get the darned thing out.  And so you have to kind of plan ahead 30, 60 days or more what you’re going to be selling, what you’re going to have available at the time.  If you did with ink jet at the newspaper plant, you’d be able to do them in one day.  You could have a scheduled in one day as part of the deadline. 

So, I think inkjet has applications that people aren’t thinking about.  And when I see all these inserts, I say – and by the way, this is where the money is for newspapers.  I say this is where the money may be for inkjet. 

And that’s my opinion.  Thank you very much. 

Next time…

This press is actually a model of the one at Williamsburg.  They took all the dimensions of it and they created an exact model in 1945.