Tabloid Economy: How The Daily Express Survives Maddy and Diana
THE answer to the Express’s “No Maddy, No Diana” dilemma is simple. It’s the economy, stupid.
The paper’s keenest minds are focusing their fierce intellects upon the rising cost of living and the stable price of the Express itself.
A price, as we reported previously, that is lower the Daily Mail’s.
Now that the gentleman’s agreement between the proprietors of these two great institutions has broken down, the Express feels free to have a pop at its grander rival.
“10p CHEAPER THAN THE DAILY MAIL …AND TEN TIMES BETTER.”
There is an obvious problem here.
Yes that’s right. Treading in dog shit on the way to work is also ten times better than the Mail – and what’s more, it’s 50p cheaper.
By this reckoning, the Express is therefore ten times better than treading in dog shit on the way to work, and 40p more expensive.
That’s not really much of a selling point is it?
It also ignores the awkward fact that the Express is not ten times better than the Mail. In fact, its only saving grace is that because it is a cheaply produced imitation of the Mail, it doesn’t have the money to spend on Mail style “exclusives”.
It is therefore smaller and contains less poison.
We think a fair slogan would be:
Five times better than the Mail, and ten pence cheaper! Not quite as annoying or revolting as treading in dog shit and only 40 pence more expensive!
But the Express is unlikely to follow our advice
It seems to have developed an alternative route. As befits a paper with a crusader on its masthead, it has established a “cost-of-living crusade”, which is “winning thousands of converts every day”.
It lists the costs of various household items and then blows its own trumpet for three columns. After reading this, it’s no wonder that thousands of people are buying the “fantastic value” Express, and joining its cost-of-living crusade.
But there’s a downside too. Thousands of people have also joined the crusade, but in a different way. They have worked out a brilliantly simple way of saving 90p every day – by not buying the Mail or the Express.
Unfortunately, the bad news doesn’t stop there. Thousands of others are content to save 40p a day by buying just the Mail instead of the Mail and the Express.
And some have decided, to hell with it: I’ll pay 10p more and switch from the Express to the Mail.
Meanwhile, thousands more eldery Express readers are saving 40p a day by dying.
The paper is defiant: “We will continue to crusade for a better, fairer Britain which protects the interests of the law-abiding hard-working majority.”
And if the majority continues to desert the Express, then all is not lost.
Proprietor Richard Desmond will continue to profit handsomely from his value-for-money porn, none of which, when last we looked, featured Princess Diana, Kate McCann, men dressed as medieval knights, or obsessive articles about the Daily Mail.
There must be a lesson there somewhere…
Posted: 28th, April 2008 | In: Tabloids Comments (4) | TrackBack | Permalink
