News International's U.K. newspaper The Sun launches print and outdoor advertising campaign promoting its columnists, new reduced cover price

Sandy Yang

THETFORD CENTER, Vermont , March 23, 2010 (MediaBuyerPlanner) –
Another major newspaper is in the midst of a marketing campaign. Like The New York Times, News International’s The Sun has unveiled a print and outdoor advertising campaign.

Circulation for News International’s most popular newspaper slipped below the three million mark twice in the past five months, most recently falling 3.6% to 2,972,763 in February’s circulation audit, according to MediaWeek.

The campaign features a variety of columnists, with copy that captures the columnists’ different writing styles. Ads also tout the paper’s new cover price, which was recently dropped by a third for an unknown space of time.

Focusing on Readers, Not Advertisers

Unlike the campaign currently being run by The New York Times, however - a trade campaign which hopes to keep the newspaper from losing advertisers to the Wall Street Journal’s soon-to-be-launched New York section - The Sun’s campaign is geared toward increasing readership at a time when circulation is falling across most of the newspaper industry.

Weekday newspaper circulation fell 10.6% in the first half of 2009, while Sunday circulation slipped 7.5%, compared to the same period in 2008, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

News Corp U.K. Group Circ. Slips

For the quarter ended December 31, 2009, News International parent company News Corp reported [pdf] that its U.K. newspaper group saw circulation revenues decline 5%. Ad revenues for the quarter were flat.

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