Interview: Sarah Sands, Sunday Telegraph (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
It would, the editor promised, be "like your iPod - containing all your favourite things". Yet just two months after Sarah Sands relaunched the Sunday Telegraph as "something lovely" aimed more directly at women, circulation is playing a distinctly depressing tune. Last month, after a launch buoyed by marketing and a free DVD, sales fell back by more than 10 per cent to 642,000 copies, of which just 249,000 were bought domestically at full price. Rivals have been quick to dismiss the relaunch as disastrous. So has Sands misjudged her conservative and relatively elderly readership's tolerance for radical change?
Last Friday, when the December audited circulation figures were published, she wrote her staff a morale-boosting email. "Do not be alarmed," Sands implored them - only to have the email quickly leaked. "We did not have marketing support in December, unlike many of our rivals. We have a very strong new product... New advertisers are flocking to the magazines and we are getting devoted converts daily."
Whether she genuinely is bothered by her sales figures, Sands is upbeat. The relaunch was "bold", she explains, and she now has "a very attractive package for advertisers". Yes, circulation has met a few temporary "headwinds", but that was par for the course. "In November, the story was 'utterly successful, amazing triumph'; in December, it's 'total disaster'. It's journalism, and people react shortterm. It takes time for readers to know you, and we now have the foundations."
Sands, 44, the Daily Telegraph's deputy editor for 10 years, was put in charge of the Sunday in June after Dominic Lawson was suddenly fired. In her initial speech to staff, she explained her vision ref lecting her own "neo-Thatcherite zeal for self-improvement - I am at heart a housewife". The feminine tone was reflected in her "revitalised" paper, launched five months later, which includes Seven, a colour arts and entertainment magazine, and Stella, a women's magazine, which she introduced to readers as "a journalistic spa: beautiful, calm, witty, transforming".
Could Sunday Telegraph readers be resisting the apparent "feminising" of their paper? No, she says, they simply have not yet got used to the quality of the journalism. "I can't find that charm, such playful, delightful intelligence in other Sunday papers, and I know there are enough people [out there] for it," she says. "But there does have to be a period of introduction. I know we'll get there. If I'm proved wrong, then so be it."
The truth, she says, is that the paper was allocated zero marketing spend in December, while The Observer was on television. "Of course, I could make the circulation go up, but it would cost money. So I have to find a course where the paper has healthy advertising, and then stuff happens.
"What I have now is a very attractive package for advertisers, and the quality of paper and design is bringing in new kinds of advertising for clothes, luxury goods, beauty. Our advertising man was just talking to me about The Observer. Now, Roger [Alton, its editor] is very talented, but his magazine did not have much advertising in it, We're not a loss making operation, and that's a fantastic thing." Circulation will be up by the summer, she suggests, aided by readers defecting from the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times, as well as the "spontaneous" readers attracted at the news stand. And although there have been some "very courteous" complaints from older readers rejecting her new offer, some, she says, will undoubtedly return.
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It would, the editor promised, be "like your iPod - containing all your favourite things". Yet just two months after Sarah Sands relaunched the Sunday Telegraph as "something lovely" aimed more directly at women, circulation is playing a distinctly depressing tune. Last month, after a launch buoyed by marketing and a free DVD, sales fell back by more than 10 per cent to 642,000 copies, of which just 249,000 were bought domestically at full price. Rivals have been quick to dismiss the relaunch as disastrous. So has Sands misjudged her conservative and relatively elderly readership's tolerance for radical change?
Last Friday, when the December audited circulation figures were published, she wrote her staff a morale-boosting email. "Do not be alarmed," Sands implored them - only to have the email quickly leaked. "We did not have marketing support in December, unlike many of our rivals. We have a very strong new product... New advertisers are flocking to the magazines and we are getting devoted converts daily."
Whether she genuinely is bothered by her sales figures, Sands is upbeat. The relaunch was "bold", she explains, and she now has "a very attractive package for advertisers". Yes, circulation has met a few temporary "headwinds", but that was par for the course. "In November, the story was 'utterly successful, amazing triumph'; in December, it's 'total disaster'. It's journalism, and people react shortterm. It takes time for readers to know you, and we now have the foundations."
Sands, 44, the Daily Telegraph's deputy editor for 10 years, was put in charge of the Sunday in June after Dominic Lawson was suddenly fired. In her initial speech to staff, she explained her vision ref lecting her own "neo-Thatcherite zeal for self-improvement - I am at heart a housewife". The feminine tone was reflected in her "revitalised" paper, launched five months later, which includes Seven, a colour arts and entertainment magazine, and Stella, a women's magazine, which she introduced to readers as "a journalistic spa: beautiful, calm, witty, transforming".
Could Sunday Telegraph readers be resisting the apparent "feminising" of their paper? No, she says, they simply have not yet got used to the quality of the journalism. "I can't find that charm, such playful, delightful intelligence in other Sunday papers, and I know there are enough people [out there] for it," she says. "But there does have to be a period of introduction. I know we'll get there. If I'm proved wrong, then so be it."
The truth, she says, is that the paper was allocated zero marketing spend in December, while The Observer was on television. "Of course, I could make the circulation go up, but it would cost money. So I have to find a course where the paper has healthy advertising, and then stuff happens.
"What I have now is a very attractive package for advertisers, and the quality of paper and design is bringing in new kinds of advertising for clothes, luxury goods, beauty. Our advertising man was just talking to me about The Observer. Now, Roger [Alton, its editor] is very talented, but his magazine did not have much advertising in it, We're not a loss making operation, and that's a fantastic thing." Circulation will be up by the summer, she suggests, aided by readers defecting from the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times, as well as the "spontaneous" readers attracted at the news stand. And although there have been some "very courteous" complaints from older readers rejecting her new offer, some, she says, will undoubtedly return.
. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .
.. . . AND READ MORE MEDIA INTERVIEWS HERE . . .
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