Oooh ah Daily Star…

— Posted Monday 28th June 2010 by Lisa Woodman under Stuff worth knowing

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting the very lovely Gareth Morgan, editor of the Daily Star Sunday, for a cuppa and to find out if it’s still ladies, booze and motors which keep this British red top interested.

In fact I had a bit of a rude awakening… and not in the ‘rude’ way you might expect from The Star.

Renowned as every white van man’s favourite, the paper is now the top read among the UK's youth and boasts the youngest readership of all UK papers.

But it’s  the paper's thirst for real life stories [they are always the best news stories] that is great news for us PRs.  While many in our business have always relied upon the ‘one in five mums would still buy their kids’ turkey twizzlers’ news stories, ‘babe in a bikini covered in strawberries’ photo stunt and ‘80% of UK women can handle vindaloo compared to 30% of men’ scientific stories to launch a campaign in a redtop [which Gareth adds are still very relevant to their readers] – it is mainly quirky stories that get the nation smiling and chatting about down the pub that floats their boat. 

Press trips for us travel PRs, and reader offers, remain ever popular – but to get that all-important front page promotional spot it's all about providing as many prizes for readers as possible and keeping it relevant – in this case offers of interest to younger readers! 

Businesses might run scared at this prospect, after all the Daily Sunday Star has 996,000 readers. A 'free for every reader' offer sounds frightening but the cost needs to be evaluated on the average number of people who actual take up the deal, which tends to be much lower. As a result, you gets fantastic coverage that costs very little to the client.

Gareth also highlighted the trend of PRs working with news agencies to create complete feature packages with pics and copy. It's great for newsrooms with declining numbers of journalists, and works for the PRs because the selling in is handled for them. The agencies know exactly what the paper wants yet can still work in the client angle. 

With a third of readers being women and the shift in readership age (34 and lower), this red top is not to be avoided by clients and PRs who may look down their noses at it!