Well that was odd.
I work in a petrol station at the moment part-time, and we sell newspapers.
You know, like paper books with news in.
No? Erm….well it’s like a print out of what you can read online for nothing, a day or so after the big story has happened. With silly celebrity opinions shoehorned in.
In amongst this, we also sell some works of fiction, like the Daily Mail.
Anyway, a few weeks back I noticed this had been delivered to us:
At the time, I remembered a lesson in college recently, about how slagging off your competition is not a great way to advertise your product/service, as people tend to think you are a bunch of c***s.
Also, what is the “Casual Sun”? I don’t think we stock that title.
If they mean Sun readers who are only occasionally reading it, again – how would I know? I don’t take note of what every customer reads.
If someone buys a Twix, I don’t ask them if they’re only casually buying it, or if they would much prefer a Snickers. Very strange.
I’m not working today, and it’s jobs day in the Bristol Evening Post (my local paper), so I just nipped out to my local newsagents.
Once inside, upon approaching the newspaper stand, I noticed a man loitering shiftily.
As I got closer, he asked “getting a newspaper?”
I thought he was some bored shop assistant, and didn’t really have time to answer before my hand touched a copy of today’s Evening Post.
“Oh..” he said, upon sighting my choice, “can I interest you in a copy of the Daily Mail?”
“Erm no – I don’t really read the Daily Mail”, I replied.
I thought that would be the end of it to be honest, but he came back with the frankly amazing retort of:
“You don’t have to read it. You could just sign up for the vouchers to improve my stats”.
Lol. I almost felt sorry enough for him to sign up.
Everyone has to earn a living, and what with the economy being completely screwed at the moment, and admiring his honesty, I almost decided to do him a favour.
Sadly, I couldn’t be arsed. Plus, signing up to receive Daily Mail vouchers probably gets me junk mail from the BNP and other unsavory organisations.
Sorry about that Mr Daily Mail man.
It makes me wonder though if the Daily Mail are seriously worrying about losing sales.
It saddens me to say this, but as someone who has to accept/return newspapers as part of my job, the biggest selling non-Murdoch title is the Daily Mail. By a long margin.
We get two copies of the Financial Times. We return two copies unsold.
We get thirty copies of the Daily Mail, and sometimes return two unsold, on a bad day.
Nationally, the Daily Mail is the biggest selling daily…thing..by miles.
The real irony is that despite the disappointment of the Daily Mail voucher tout, and despite my reluctance to have anything to do with that publication, the newspaper I bought – the Bristol Evening Post – is owned by “Bristol News and Media Ltd”, which is “a member of the DMGT Group of Companies”. The Daily Mail and General Trust owns it anyway.
