Why advertisers choose The STAR

From our humble debut of a mere eight pages with no single ad, The Philippine STAR’s rise to its current stature has always been built around three pillars: good content, an ear for reader and customer feedback, and a passion for innovation.

These three attributes have helped us stay on top of the advertising charts in the print media for the past five years.

We have often chosen to keep quiet about our strategy and to be low-key about trumpeting our wins and conquests. Sure, we have introduced a slew of innovations, studied our market, and trained our advertising team well, but many ask: What makes The STAR the top choice of advertisers?

On our 25th year and at the pinnacle of our ‘star-dom’, it’s a truth worth telling: Our success in advertising all boils down to love.

Yes, you read that right. And there’s a lot of it that goes around.

The passion for what we do comes from loving our paper and believing in what it stands for. Since Day One, The STAR has clearly set itself apart as a paper for nation-building. Our paper presents content that promotes progress, fairness and justice. To best sum it up, our paper exists because we seek to give readers hope for positive change, and a fighting chance for our country to succeed.

Through the years, readers have often noted how much The STAR made them feel good about themselves, our country and the future despite the slew of negative news that media is prone to report. Our paper goes beyond the front page and offers an interesting read from our Sports to our Lifestyle pages, which is why we have been called “the only paper you read from cover to cover”.

Transcending the paper’s content, the warmth of The STAR extends to our business relationships as well. Our love of the paper fuels a passion to connect with our advertisers, whose singular desire is to connect with our readers.

It is this love that has inspired us to introduce several innovations for our clients, from offering a lockout issue to a single advertiser in the ’90s, to false covers, numerous creative print ad executions, special distribution services and publicity plans. When we say “Let’s talk,” we actually mean, “Let’s collaborate.”

Going into our 25th year, the changing media landscape and consumer habits of the present have further heightened our passion to bring the love of our paper to a wider audience. This year, we came up with several Lifestyle events to drumbeat our silver anniversary celebration, not for the sake of creating buzz but to celebrate our milestone year with our Lifestyle audience.

We rolled off the year by mounting a Literary and Writing Month with National Bookstore; introduced the next wave of faces that will grace future covers through YStyle’s Femme Noir with Samsung and Century Properties; celebrated Mother’s Day with Run For Mom with Wilkins; and just this month, we launched a unique food and dining fest called EAT with Ayala Malls and BPI Cards.

Through these events, we have managed to create word of mouth with the use of a traditional medium such as the newspaper, while utilizing the benefits of new media. Today’s advances in technology have propelled us to love even more: To care more for our clients and advertising agencies, to connect and inspire our loyal readers more through our content, and become more nurturing in our work culture.

When I was new at The STAR some 24 years ago, our then marketing director Grace Glory Go inspired us with the working slogan, “Working together for peace through justice”. Young as I was, it didn’t make sense to me until the love of The STAR grew in me. Love makes fairness, justice and truth quite possible.