Focus on your core audience says Daily Sun's Sampson

The Daily Sun, South Africa's largest-selling newspaper, is at times controversial, but its success is beyond dispute. Launched in 2002, it has a readership of nearly five million, or one-sixth of the country's adult population - and it is doing it in print.

Fergus Sampson, who helped build it, will explain how newspapers in print can grow, even in the digital age, at the forthcoming Power of Print conference, a new event organised by the World Association of Newspapers. The event takes place in Barcelona, Spain, on 27 and 28 May, 2009.

The Daily Sun is claimed to be read almost exclusively by working-class males. It is not an intellectual publication, but the newspaper revels in its market position: it claims to have made new newspaper readers out of millions of citizens.

Fergus Sampson said: “There is lots of talk of gadgets and online, but there's one wonderful ingredient that is often left out: passion. Passion to serve people, to listen to people, to give them what they want.” Sampson says a focus on core audience will always unlock a positive response in readers.

The Power of Print conference, to be held concurrently with the annual World Newspaper Advertising Conference, is the first global conference for senior newspaper executives to explore new opportunities and successful strategies exclusively for the printed newspaper. Although digital innovation is a primary area of newspaper industry development, print and advertising continue to fund these new ventures, as well as being the profit centres for the vast majority of newspaper companies, even in these tough times.

The two-day conference will be followed by the World Newspaper Advertising Conference, on 28 and 29 May, at the Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I, Barcelona. Full details of the Power of Print conference can be found at www.wan-press.org/powerofprint2009/home.phpand details of the advertising conference can be found at www.wan-press.org/advertising2009/home.php.