How the Mail made readers incandescent

A year after giving away free energy-saving bulbs, the tabloid has switched its allegiance and decided to put its energy into a national campaign to save 'beloved' traditional ones
Stephen Brook and Alok Jha
The Guardian, Monday 12 January 2009

Exactly one year ago, the Daily Mail offered its readers two free energy-saving lightbulbs. Last week, following a headline that it was "the end of light as we know it" and a story about retailers agreeing to ditch traditional and "beloved" bulbs for more expensive, low-energy ones, the paper was at it again. Only this time the lightbulbs were of the incandescent variety.
After "unprecedented public demand" for the 5,000 traditional bulbs the paper had obtained, the Mail offered five free 100w light bulbs for every reader in return for 12 tokens and 1.63 for postage.
Along with the energy-saving bulbs, last year the Mail also ran a highly successful campaign to banish plastic shopping bags, which led to noticeably fewer of them at the supermarket. As far back as May 2007 the Mail also gave space to James Murdoch, then chief executive of BSkyB, to promote eco-friendly behaviour. Murdoch, now the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation Europe and Asia and rival to the Mail's parent Daily Mail and General Trust, was given 648 words to plug the We're In This Together scheme in which Sky gave away, yes, eco-friendly lightbulbs. "One person, one victory at a time, day by day, we can and will make a difference. On this challenge we are, truly, in this together," Murdoch wrote. Well, not anymore, to judge by the Mail this week.
Why such a massive environmental U-turn by the Mail? And how significant will it be for environmental campaigners?
EU ban
At first glance it seems that the Mail's instant rage at any perceived threat to the freedom of its readers from the EU - there will be a mandatory EU ban in 2016 - had extinguished its environmental leanings. A lament to the ending of the traditional lightbulb, as the Mail saw it, on page 3 of the newspaper, became the most read science and technology story on the Mail's website and attracted 135 comments last Tuesday. A sense of concern and suspicion of the new technology and anger at the perceived nanny state apparently prompted the deputy editor Alastair Sinclair, in the absence of editor-in-chief Paul Dacre, to mount last week's campaign.
Colin Butfield, the head of campaigns at WWF, acknowledges that the Daily Mail was reflecting its readers concerns. And to create the major behavioural change required to tackle climate change, Butfield says, those concerns need to be met.
"You're not going to tackle the scale of things we need to do in the UK if you're not getting on board the readership of the Daily Mail. If you get them on board the likelihood is that the paper would follow that lead."
Complaints from the Mail's readership ranged from the weak light from energy-efficient bulbs to their relatively high cost to the fact that they were being promoted by the nanny state and, even worse, Eurocrats.
For John Sauven, the chief executive of Greenpeace UK, the Mail's campaign against compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) is an expression of nimby-ism. "There's something that people dont like about everything - you name it, somebody will be opposed to it. Partly people dont like change."
The Mail's importance in such campaigning is illustrated by a letter from Lord Hunt, the minister for energy innovation, to the letters page in defence of energy-saving bulbs within days of the campaign being launched. This did not stop the Mail's promotions department to offer to make traditional lightbulbs if necessary: "Dont worry if the offer is over subscribed we will get the bulbs especially made."
So what of the paper's criticism of the health and efficiency of energy-saving lightbulbs that they contain worrying levels of mercury among other things? Sauven says that might have been true for the first generation of low-energy bulbs, available several years ago, but that those perceptions were way out of date. "The first computers were the size of buildings for the equivalent power of a mobile phone - something new is never optimal, it's the beginning of a pathway, he says. Yet he agrees with Butfield that the mass market audience represented by the Mail needed to be brought on board. "The Mail is reaching middle England and it's exactly middle England that you want to bring on board," says Sauven. Appealing to readers' environmental consciences but also their purses - pointing out that they could save money on CFLs was the way to do this, he says.
The Mail's rivals are naturally less ready to agree that the paper needs to be brought on board. Allan MacCaskill, the head of brand at the Sun, accuses the Mail of being out of touch. "Its ridiculous that the Daily Mail are advocating lightbulbs that use more energy and will ultimately cost their readers more money. What's more incredulous is that the paper isn't using old stock but manufacturing these energy-guzzling bulbs to order. We have no idea why the Daily Mail picked this promotion - to us it's another sign they're out of touch with what people across the country want."
Of course the Sun has its own lightbulb story. Last year the paper was, in the words of its own executives, gobsmacked by the success of its eco-friendly lightbulb giveaway. On a Saturday the Sun normally sells about 3.5m copies. When it gave away two free energy-saving lightbulbs in January 2008, it sold 3,908,000 copies. So successful was the Sun's offer that the Mail's own giveaway of energy-saving bulbs was designed as a spoiler.
As a perhaps surprising endnote, one wag suggested that the inspiration for the Mail's first piece is understood to have come from a lighthearted piece in the Guardian's Shortcuts section a week ago.