The market research behind the 'SunPower'

click to enlarge

So if Du Plessis is the father of the Daily Sun - now the biggest paper in the country with a staggering 430 000 sales a day and 4.6 million readers - then Kuper is its mother.

And eight years after this rambunctious paper's birth, Kuper, an independent researcher and a director of FutureFact, is still doing market research for the Daily Sun.

Bizcommunity.com spoke to her about the latest focus groups, which revealed a marked change in readers' attitude to the government - "a deep vein of cynicism" as Du Plessis put it in a recent blog post that shows that people are no longer waiting for the government to help them - but are out there helping themselves.

Bizcommunity: The Daily Sun created a market of new newspaper readers, which by my reckoning not many in print know or understand.

Jos Kuper: What's not generally understood about this market is the degree of social mobility there is within the market and the fact that, where in the US it takes four generations for a poor family to reach the average income of the average family, in South Africa it is considerably less than that. A lot of people have done it one generation. The degree of social mobility makes for huge aspiration and what we are finding is actually a complete shift in the mind set from the day when there was a kind of entitlement mindset to one now of 'we need to do it for ourselves'.

I don't know if you've read a book by a Nobel Prize-winning economist called Amartya Sen. He wrote a book called Development as Freedom. He's wonderful and he's written a number of very interesting books on identity and violence. But Development as Freedom has been seminal in my life in terms of understanding this market really well and we've used it very extensively in the Daily Sun because it's been confirmed in all the research that we've done.

One of the things that he talks about is how important certain freedoms are in people's lives - the freedom to get a good education, good medical care and free media and democracy that enable people to start taking control of their own lives. If you want to unlock the Daily Sun, that is the key to this market because is what [the paper] has done right from Day One. When we conceived the paper in its fullness, [the idea] was to find a way in which it talked the people's language in a way they could understand but helped them to take control of their own lives.

Biz: So is taking control of your life the greatest aspiration?

Kuper: It is a very great aspiration. Now, I'm not talking about people from LSM [Living Standard Measure] 1-3. Remember that's not the Daily Sun market. The Daily Sun's market is basically LSM 5-7.

Biz: Are these people nurses and teachers, then?

Kuper: Yes, and right across the spectrum. If you take a look [at the numbers], they have more black LSM 8-10 readers than any other publication. But that's irrelevant because Deon does not focus on them at all.

Biz: You've got to choose your market.

Kuper: Yes, but many people tend to dismiss the paper as being the Tokoloshe-dominated tabloid but, in fact, if you look at the paper on a daily basis, you'll see that those kinds of stories and very few and far between. Because the market had moved on from those times and, even if there are many people who do believe it [witchcraft], and others are not denigratory of them when they do believe it - a lot of people are more cynical. A lot more don't believe in it or don't want their children to read that stuff.

So the Daily Sun has moved off it to a very large extent because it keeps in touch with its market all the time. One third of the paper was actually conceptualised to be 'how to' - how to get a driver's licence, how to open a bank account, how to understand what interest means. If you have a look [at the paper today], there is always a page that is very enabling, which says: "Do it for yourself, take your power into your own hands." This is coming through very strongly [in the research] now that a lot of people are understanding that they can't wait for the government to provide.

Biz: So do you do a lot of focus groups for the Daily Sun?

Kuper: All kinds of research for them... this market is changing very rapidly... A lot of people got very unhappy during the recession but there were interesting ramifications of this that Deon could use...

Some people didn't sit around and wait for others to provide. They got stuck into it and started doing it for themselves. One of the guys in the focus groups said: "I've begun to realise that after years of waiting for government intervention that it's DIY time now. We must stand up and find a way to do things for ourselves." Now that's a very healthy thing.

Biz: So do you think that because things got so dire in the recession, it prodded some people into doing things for themselves?

Kuper: Absolutely. Well, a lot of people decided that they weren't going to just sit around even though they couldn't find a job. A lot went off and volunteered for various things where they learned new skills. And, you know, a lot of economists are saying that our Gini coefficient [that measures inequality of distribution] isn't as bad as Stats SA makes out because Stats SA doesn't take into account things like free electricity and subsidised this and that and the [social] grants.

Biz: Are most of the readers only buying the Daily Sun when it comes to newspapers?

Kuper: Well, no, the Sowetan (owned by Avusa) has a certain constituency and people buy The Star [owned by Independent Newspapers] on a Wednesday for Work Place. But, by and large, when we looked at the impact of the [nationwide public-sector] strike on circulation - with its effect on transportation - people weren't moving to another newspaper at all. So this is a very entrenched, very loyal market. People who feel it is their friend.

Biz: Is that how most people view the papers - as their friend?

Kuper: Oh yes, there are even criminals who hand themselves over to TK [(Themba Khumalo] the editor, and he takes them to the police station because that's the level of trust in the newspaper. You know, there's that page called the 'Department of Horror Affairs' which highlights people who've had difficulties at Home Affairs - so the paper is doing a lot of good. They call it 'SunPower', where they help the people take the power for themselves.

Biz: Talking about social mobility, surely the children of today's readers - if not some of these readers - will move up the LSM ranks and start reading other papers. What does the Daily Sun do about that? Try keep them in some way or go after the new entrants to LSM 5- 7 as urbanisation grows in South Africa?

Kuper: You musn't forget that usually more than one generation is living in a home and under these circumstances you've got a lot of young people still reading the paper... If they say [in our research] that they don't buy it for themselves, that they are buying it for their parents; you find they still read it. That is happening...

We looked at whether the Daily Sun should move up [the LSMs] and if you have a look at the projections of the Bureau of Market Research up to 2015, you'll see that they are predicting that the three biggest LSMs will be 5,6 and7. While 4 is plateauing, 5 is growing, 6 will be massive - it will be the biggest in the country - and, of course, you also get growth in LSM 7,8,9, and 10. So you are getting substantial numbers of the black elite in LSM 10 but the fact is that this market is going to be enormous for the Daily Sun for a long time to come.

Biz: And you can't discount loyalty to a paper. Lots of very educated people in the UK, for instance, continue to read the Daily Mail [tabloid] because it's always been their family paper.

Kuper: Yes, and the reason for that loyalty is that instead of focusing on a variety of broad-ranging issues, they hone in on the things and issues that are preoccupying their market.

Biz: Do you think then it's vital to do market research with tabloids?

Kuper: I think all media needs to do research... You need to know these people in your tummy. But I always say it's all very well to have great research - but that's only one step of the way. You also need editors and the publishers for whom it resonates in their tummies. Great editors know how to interpret the research so that it translates into the product.

For more:

• Daily Sun: Blog of Daily Sun publisher Deon du Plessis
  
• Bizcommunity: Why we should celebrate our wacky tabloids
  
• Bizcommunity: Famous in the townships; invisible in the suburbs
  
• Bizcommunity: isiZulu Sunday Times a sign of the next big publishing frontier