VIENNA, Va. -- The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has honored five retailers who have demonstrated a long-term cooperative effort to sell and market newspapers in their stores.
The winners of the 2006 Newspaper Merchandiser of the Year Award included convenience retailers Circle K, 7-Eleven and Kum & Go, as well as supermarket retailers Kroger and Albertson's.
The awards broke down as follows:
Convenience Store: Circle K, nominated by Tucson Newspapers, Mark G. Torres, single-copy sales manager. Grocery Store: Kroger, [image-nocss] nominated by Detroit Newspaper Partnership LP, Jeff Gibson, single-copy sales manager; the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jennifer Morrow, circulation category manager; the Cincinnati Enquirer, Valecia Quinn, single-copy director. Best Partnership Promotion: Krause Gentle Corp./Kum & Go, nominated by the Des Moines Register, Rick Bell, vice president of circulation. Best Creative Promotion: 7-Eleven, nominated by the San Francisco Chronicle, Michael Costello, retail sales supervisor. Best Local Market Promotion: Albertson's, nominated by the Visalia (Calif.) Times Delta, Angie Hauser, consumer marketing manager.As more and more organizations realize the importance of the newspapers as a traffic builder for other items in the stores, retailers like these are demonstrating the deep commitment to a newspaper-retailer partnership. Their creative ideas and sales innovations model the industry's cutting-edge approach to single-copy promotions, said NAA senior vice president and chief marketing officer John Kimball.
The winners, selected from among 37 finalists, were judged in areas including product promotion, creative, sales and impact for the newspaper and for the retailer.
NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $55 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the United States and Canada. Most NAA members are daily newspapers, accounting for 87% of the U.S. daily circulation. The group focuses on six key strategic priorities that affect the newspaper industry collectively: marketing, public policy, diversity, industry development, newspaper operations and readership.
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