Martha Stewart Living is a creation of Martha Stewart, a successful woman and business woman, who tried to do her best to succeed in both roles. And it seems that she managed to combine these two qualities. Being established in 1996, the company has its headquarters in New York. Martha Stewart has established a magazine and later a television show, having become very popular among American viewers, who follow Stewart’s advice as she speaks on the topic of home, home decoration, cooking and other household things. At first Martha Stewart Living magazine was published quarterly, however, after a while it started to be published monthly. Stewart’s project is a very successful one, as both her magazine and a TV show have taken first places in several important awards. Martha Stewart Living is also a brand name of the large media project, featuring Martha Stewart. The project received the name Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia’s (MSLO).
The mission of the company is rather broad, as it embraces all spheres of home life of people. The company devoted its activity to “enriching the changing lives of today’s women” [3]. The areas of operation of MSLO include eight areas: “home – decorating, collecting, and renovating; Cooking & Entertaining- recipes, techniques, and indoor and outdoor entertaining; Gardening – planting, landscape design, and outdoor living; Crafts – how-to projects; Holidays- celebrating special days and special occasions; Organizing- homekeeping, petkeeping, clotheskeeping, restoring, and other types of domestic maintenance; Weddings – all aspects of planning and celebrating a wedding; Baby & Kids – cooking, decorating, crafts, and other projects and celebrations surrounding infants and children” [3]. All of the mentioned above services can be found on the website on the Internet, where consumers are granted with a wide selection of content they can access.
One of their main goals is to teach people how to build a home. For this reason they hire new employees teach them how to be creative, reliable, and give necessary advice to people. So, “in order to develop people from the get-go, the company introduced a full-fledged orientation program to emphasize the importance of learning and development” [1]. The main purpose behind this orientation program was to “acquaint new hires with MSLO’s philosophy, “People are our greatest asset” [1].
Target audience for Martha Stewart Living is women, to whom the company offers the majority of its services. In order to attract more customers, Martha Stewart Living uses traditional marketing techniques. After designing a new product, the company uses a merchandising program for it, develops advertising campaign using its own trade mark, to which a lot of consumers have already become loyal. It attracts people by using promotional material, such as free text recipes on its website.
In conclusion, MSLO and its leader Martha Stewart has won the hearts of millions of women in the USA, who now cannot imagine their lives without the advice from such a specialist in “home-building” as Martha Stewart.
References:
McLean, C. (2006). Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia: Setting Standards With Competencies. Retrieved November 17, 2006.
http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_article.asp?articleid=1332&zoneid=88
MARTHA STEWART LIVING: Editorial Mission Statement. Retrieved November 17, 2006. www.marthastewart.com
Martha Stewart Living Omnime. Retrieved November 17, 2006. http://money.cnn.com/quote/snapshot/snapshot.html?symb=MSO