Every Saturday, a pack of advertising brochures wrapped in plastic foil is in millions of German mailboxes – but only until the end of March 2024. Deutsche Post has announced that it will discontinue “Einkaufaktuell”.
Deutsche Post will stop producing and distributing the “Einkaufaktuell” prospectus advertising program on April 1 of next year. “The reasons are the increased costs: inflation, higher energy and paper prices and rising personnel costs have made the production and sale of this product drastically more expensive,” explained the Bonn-based company.
In addition, demand has dropped significantly, many companies have reduced their advertising expenditure for brochure advertising and digitized it. “We have to react to the development that brick-and-mortar retailers in particular are reducing their spending on classic weekly brochures for retail advertising,” explained Benjamin Rasch, Head of Marketing for the group’s postal and parcel division. The transition period until April gives business customers and partners such as printers time to adapt to the change.
criticism of environmentalists
Since 2003, the brochure bundles have been delivered to up to 18 million households on Saturdays. After criticism of the plastic packaging of the bundles of brochures, the Post partially switched to paper bands.
Environmentalists welcomed the news: “‘Einkaufaktuell’ is a symbol for the outdated German throwaway society,” said Viola Wohlgemuth from Greenpeace. “Untargeted print advertising means that vast amounts of paper end up in the bin unread.” That is a waste that cannot be afforded in the fight against the climate and resource crisis.