They say 'Happy Birthday' is the most popular song in the world. Well, that certainly seems to be the case at the Oriental Press Group.
Not only is the company halving the price of the Sun to $3 today to celebrate the paper's seventh anniversary, it also plans to launch a marketing campaign to celebrate the 37th anniversary of the flagship Oriental Daily News, even though neither of these momentous birthdays actually takes place until next year.
Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that either paper feels threatened by the two new free tabloids - Sing Tao News Corp's Headline Daily and property agency boss Shih Wing-ching's am730 - hitting the streets a few months ago.
'We don't think the free dailies are better than the Sun. They are really very poor, only copying news from other media. In contrast, our strength is our news team,' the Sun declared in an editorial comment yesterday.
Meanwhile, the Kung Fu Tea column in the Oriental Daily News announced that, from today, readers of both papers would be able to make use of a tear-out $3 supermarket coupon that effectively meant they could get the Sun for free.
Yet another case of 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' stunt.
