CONSUMERS USES ADS INSTEAD OF STAMPS
By Adnews Staff
This fall Consumers Distributing will be expanding a scheme to use advertising rather than Canada Post to get its catalogues distributed to shoppers. The Toronto-based discount retailer decided to to mail out fewer catalogues this spring and to use radio and newspaper ads to let people know the catalogues were available at Consumers stores. This cut down postage costs, Steve Ince told a group attending a luncheon organized by The Advertising Club of Toronto this week. Ince, the general manager of Consumers Distributing Superstores, added that the radio ads pulled a lot better than newspapers. He said that in the spring this scheme was only used in smaller markets, but it will be expanded into larger centres for the fall catalogue. Ince told his audience that in recent years Consumers has been cutting down on its use of flyers, which he termed the "retailer's cocaine" because they bring instant pleasure in the form of increased sales. Newsprint price hikes have greatly increased the costs of flyers, said Ince, to the point where some of them are not increasing sales enough to make them worthwhile. Consumers, which was putting out 25 flyers a year in 1993, has cut out the "marginal" ones and started using radio to back up "key event" flyers.