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...plunge in advertising revenue has dragged Martha Stewart Living into the red for the first time in its five years as a public company. In the first quarter, sales dropped 23%, to $44.5 million, and the company lost $20 million. Winning back advertisers will take more than heartfelt pleas from loyal readers. Advertisers are looking for a reinvention of the brand, says Robert Passikoff, president of the consulting-and-research firm Brand Keys. Inside the pages of the company's magazines, that is already happening. With the September issue, Martha Stewart Living will be redesigned to reduce the emphasis...
Near the peak of her company's success, Martha Stewart inadvertently summed up both the strength and the vulnerability of the empire she had built. At an advertising-industry conference in Detroit in 2001, she was speaking to a crowd of starstruck ad executives when somewhere in the crowd, a voice piped up with a fawning question. "Someone asked her, 'You dispense all this advice. Who taught you all these things? Who's your mentor?'" recalls Samir Husni, a magazine consultant who also spoke at the meeting. "She said, 'Me. Me. I did it all by myself...
That unyielding self-reliance helped build Martha Stewart the millionaire, but the future of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the company, will depend on a very different kind of corporate chemistry now that its founder has been sentenced to serve time in prison for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators. It took 26 months and a bruising federal trial to break, if just for a moment, Stewart's stony resolve. She stood before Judge Miriam Cedarbaum last week in a lower-Manhattan courtroom, her voice faltering as she begged for leniency. "My hopes that my life...
Patrick's challenge is to find a way to regain the confidence of advertisers, many of whom have abandoned Martha Stewart Living, the company's flagship magazine. Ad revenue dropped 54% in the first quarter, and over the past 18 months the magazine has lost about 500,000, or 22%, of its subscribers. In an impassioned statement delivered outside the New York City courthouse where she heard her sentence, Stewart made a sales pitch on behalf of her "beloved company." Standing in a sober black suit with her daughter Alexis behind her, she thanked fans for sending thousands of letters...
Consumers, however, seem to have stood by Stewart. Passikoff explains that, while Stewart's image may have been important in marketing the magazine, it isn't essential to sell a rug or a pie plate. In fact, sales of Martha Stewart--brand sheets, towels and dishes through K Mart have risen 6.5% since Stewart's conviction, according to a report by Bear Stearns...