Daily Star: Britain’s Most “Successful” Newspaper?

I was unfortunate enough to catch a TV advert for the Daily Star last night. I think it must have been after the football which I saw a few minutes of. I can’t imagine another programme I might have been watching which the Daily Star might want to target me in. At least it wasn’t in the middle of The Daily Show on More 4 where the Daily Mail was recently found to be advertising…
Quite why anyone would read the Daily Star I’m really not sure. My lack of understanding of the Star is dwarfed by the reason anyone would read the Daily Express. I just don’t understand why anyone would read that rag whatever your opinions. I don’t particularly like The Sun, The Mirror and certainly not the rabid Daily Mail. But I can appreciate that they all do their respective job well, which is why I fail to understand why anyone would read the inferior versions offered by Richard Desmond’s business.
That’s all as maybe, but I was intrigued by the ‘el cheapo’ ad which basically featured a Daily Star logo and a voiceover. The advert was persuading you to read the paper on the basis that “The Daily Star is Britain’s most successful newspaper.”
Goodness. Who’d have thought?
At the bottom of the screen was a source for the data:
“Source: ABC. Based on circulation increase Jan 09-10.”
This is true. Well at least it’s true that the Daily Star (cover price 20p nationally) is selling 10,842 more copies than it did in the same month last year, whereas The Sun (20p in the southeast, and northern England) and the Daily Mirror (45p nationally) have both lost sales. And, to be fair, the Star is – remarkably – the only newspaper of any quality to record a year on year circulation increase.
But that’s an interesting definition of “successful”.
Here’s how the last year’s sales look:

Source: ABC
So despite being a cheaper product, the paper is still firmly rooted in third place amongst the popular tabloids.
Is the advert misleading? Surely not…


Posted

in

Tags:

Comments

6 responses to “Daily Star: Britain’s Most “Successful” Newspaper?”

  1. Jobby avatar
    Jobby

    I saw that exact same advert and I thought “How on earth can THEY say that?”..
    If someone asked you right now what paper is the most successful (if anyone was sad enough to do so) no one in the right mind would reply “The Daily Star”
    At 20p surely they are forcing themselves onto people. “Oh, its only 20p – lets get it to see what the crack is”

  2. Daryl avatar
    Daryl

    There was a Daily Star advert last night (20th July) whose claim to be “Britain’s most successful newspaper” intrigued me and this blog entry came top of Google’s search. Amazed that they’re maintaining this tenuous claim for four months. Different goalposts would be required to justify it according to the latest stats where the have the biggest percentage circulation drop of any tabloid (apart from stablemate Daily Express) June 09-10:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2010/jul/16/abcs-national-newspapers
    Instead the claim could now be based only on the six monthly Jan-June averages where they have the smallest circulation reduction. Surely “Britain’s least unsuccessful newspaper”.

  3. Adam Bowie avatar

    Thanks for the comment.
    An updated blog might be in order…

  4. Charlie avatar
    Charlie

    Good post. me and my friends saw the advert about 5 minutes ago, and looked at each other with a twang of amazement and confusion! but thats what you get for watching channel 4. As always with advertising, its all in the wording… and sometimes thats about as deep as it ever goes.

  5. Daryl avatar
    Daryl

    Saw it again last night on Channel 4 HD (curiously I don’t think it was on regular C4) so armed with a precise date and time I’ve decided to submit a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority http://asa.org.uk/ because the statistical basis of the claim is so out of date as to be misleading in apparent contravention of BCAP http://bcap.org.uk/

  6. web design northampton avatar

    I always thought the Sun was the most read. The Daily Star is the worst tabloid available. Theres hardly any pages in it for a start!