Interview
Brand Martha: The domestic goddess
28 September 2011
So strong is the Martha Stewart brand that it has bounced back from its founder’s incarceration to become a global empire. One of America’s definitive women talks about her hands-on approach and persistent hard work in building a business that spans TV and publishing.
“I don’t do negative,” Martha Stewart proudly says with a smile when I ask her what she considers to be the biggest misconception about her global empire. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO) spans magazines,home furnishings, TV shows, stationary, and much more. For the record, she later admits there are many misconceptions but that she simply “doesn’t do them”.
Even though Stewart refuses to dwell on negatives, she is not oblivious to the highs and lows that have spanned both her personal and professional life. Speaking in Cannes at Interpublic’s ‘Conversations on Women in the Advertising, Marketing and Media Industry’ breakfast, she is open about her five months spent in prison following a conviction for obstruction of justice in 2004. However, when she begins to talk about her “lowest low” in life, you suddenly get a glimpse of the strength and ruthlessness that has made Stewart so successful.
“When the conviction went down and I was sitting in the courthouse and my daughter fainted. I wouldn’t faint for getting convicted for something like that! I lived through all that horror but I am very strong and I found out that not only could I survive such a thing, but I willed my company to survive too,” she explains.
“I felt like it was my personal duty because of the great employees, the great customers, readers and viewers who never left, to make sure my company survived. That was what gave me the strength. Prison was a low and a high combined together.”
Prior to her sentencing, Stewart was both chairman and chief executive of MSLO but was forced to relinquish both roles and remove herself from the company’s board of directors. According to MSLO, Stewart is expected to once again join the board in the third quarter of this year and she remains the company’s largest shareholder.
Brand Martha
Despite perceptions, Stewart is not motivated by perfection, but by striving for a personal best in everything, whether that be making jam, creating a beautiful home or building a global empire in your own name.
“My prime motivator is to run a company and develop businesses within it that are useful, practical, and valuable and that will have a longevity way beyond me. When you wake up in the morning and realise that you are a brand, how you can make yourself a little less important to the brand, and how can you make that brand extend beyond you the person, is crucial.”
Stewart’s incarceration did give MSLO a knock – stock fell more than 80% and the brand was rated lower than Enron on Forbes’ ‘Brand Loyalty Index’. But according to Stewart, the “all Martha” brand is not a negative. For her, its reputation is about being good, practical and high-quality.
Now that she is in her seventies, it would be naïve to ignore the issue of succession for MSLO. While Stewart jokes that her three-month-old granddaughter is learning Spanish so she can run the South American business and that the next grandchild will be Chinese for the Asian arm of the brand, the notion of ‘what happens next’ is a serious question when the brand is so closely aligned to one person. The recent news that MSLO has hired asset management and financial services company The Blackstone Group to “explore other opportunities” is being met with mixed reactions, signalling a possible sale or investment.
A survivor’s tale
For all her drive, shrewdness and hands-on-approach, Stewart can’t run the company with sheer force of will from the grave. She is the brand. Her alignment to it is made even clearer when she explains MSLO’s resilience by proclaiming “we survived prison”.
“I remember when I wrote the prospectus for my stock offering and they put in the warnings, which were horrible. They included things like death, dismemberment, dementia, or the ‘five Ds’ and it goes on and on and you think ‘oh my gosh, they are looking at me’. How can I make this company really survive. It is quite challenging and quite interesting.”
MSLO is a global brand. It is present in 70 countries globally through television, in 20 countries with its magazines and in numerous more markets through its book division. When I catch up with her in Cannes she is coming to the end of a circumnavigation of the globe in a bid to explore all the brand extension opportunities possible.
“Asia is definitely one of our next markets, including China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Also the Middle East is a very ripe market for us. We have products in around 55 countries, but not in a major way, and now it is time for global expansion across our home products, housewares and everywhere,” she says.
“Everyone asks if our marketing message changes when we enter new markets. It doesn’t. The dimensions of products might have to change to fit the different washing machines and stoves and beds that they have in different
countries, but the message doesn’t change. It translates across borders.”
MSLO is rooted in its magazine business. The division is still growing strong internationally but it is not immune from declining print ad revenue. Publishing revenues in the second quarter of 2011 were $34.1m, compared to $35.3m in 2010. It is hardly surprising then that MSLO is searching for additional revenues in budding economies – especially in print.
“Our magazine growth in emerging markets can be attributed to our readers who are trying to upgrade their lifestyle and are now buying magazines,” Stewart says. “Of course, it is not in the two to three million circulations that we have in the US, actually our magazine circulations have not faltered in the US either.
To our readers it matters to have the printed word. For me, it doesn’t matter if it is on the iPad or another tablet. These people don’t have computers yet, but it will be there.”
On the technology side of the business, Stewart has cracked a social media dilemma that still stumps the savviest of marketers – the tone of your online voice and how you use it. Her Facebook profile, which at the time of publishing has notched up 207,524 likes, is now much less corporate and brimming with anecdotes and photos from recent trips and links to her favourite recipes.
“It makes a big difference when a real person is the one controlling a social media account. Twitter is always written by me, and people are always amazed that it is really me. However, I only do it for five minutes a day. I don’t want to spend all my time on Twitter and no one should be on it for more than five minutes a day,” says Stewart.
The personal touch
Despite being barred from sitting on public boards and holding certain executive roles for the past five years as a result of her conviction in 2004, Stewart maintains that she is still very hands-on with the day-to-day running of her company.
Stewart is personally involved in six shows that MSLO has in production. She is also publishing her 76th book in September, Martha Entertains, and she works closely with senior executives on creating future strategy.
At the end of her talk in Cannes, delegates asked Stewart what she would like her lasting legacy to be. Surprisingly for someone who has become a global brand she claims that she is not fussed.
“I have been around the world and had an eye-opening experience. In all kinds of countries, especially those with an emerging workforce of women, the response to the Martha Stewart type of female is so positive.”
She continues: “It is difficult to be a woman in business. To make a success of it, it takes being someone who is very persistent about getting a job done and making sure that the ultimate product is really good.
“It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get that product to be exactly where you want it to be. It is not about perfection as much as it is about making it the best of its type. I suppose that at the end of the day, I want women to say ‘I’m so Martha Stewart’.”
Click here for a behind the scenes account of the day that M&M met Martha Stewart.
Martina Lacey