The night I became a Martha Blogger

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The other week I attended a blogging party hosted by Martha Stewart at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia on behalf of Birds on the Blog. Sarah sent me the invite she had received, kindly and gently suggesting that the New York Bird might like to attend.  Intuitively, I looked around and realised with a jolt that she actually meant me, the tomboy in the group, going to a frilly girls arts and crafts party! Gulp, what was she thinking?!

Martha Stewart

For those in Europe wondering who Martha Stewart is, imagine Delia Smith (the cooking part), along with arts and crafts, entertaining, holidays, home decorating, weddings, pets, healthy living and all sorts of other things added on, including a massively informative website and popular TV show, no wonder the company has Omnimedia in it’s title, Martha is both a brand and a big business.

Studio with a View

Off I traipsed on Thursday evening to Chelsea, on the west side of Manhattan.  I can see the studios across the other side of the Hudson when I walk down to the waterfront on the Jersey side, so it would be interesting to see what happens over there.  On arrival, all hot and sticky from the oppressive heat and humidity of Gotham, it was a little daunting to see a long line of overly excited and screechy ladies all in brightly coloured sun dresses, some with tiny babies in their arms and others with strollers (prams).  Uh oh.  I was in smart dress pants, a pale blue shirt and Italian suede loafers and already feeling out of place!  Resisting the temptation to bolt, after 20 mins queuing, I finally made it up to the 9th floor and the party.  You can see the view of the famous Empire State Building to the right.  Wow.

Martha playing ping pong

After a long walk round the studio corridors, passing Martha herself, in dress pants and white shirt (whew), heading out of an exit door, we came to the party itself, which was now being held in a large room and corridor instead of the room garden owing to 30 mph winds up top.  While in the queue down below, it was fun to track the hashtag and see what was going on while waiting to get in. Someone mentioned a ping pong table?  Oooh, now this tomboy is interested!

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find, but the descriptors in the second paragraph above turned out to be remarkably accurate, leading to numerous tables and displays for weddings, home decorating, white and pink cakes with pink bows, arts and crafts etc, as you can see in the photos below.

Cupcakes!

While walking down the corridor browsing and taking every thing in, waiters wandered by with trays of various tasty canapes (such as mini mushroom and feta cheese pasties, shrimp thai rolls with satay sauce) and refreshing fruit drinks (melon aqua sparkler, blueberry tea crush).  It was packed, but I managed not to disgrace myself by spilling anything .

Wedding cakes displays

Along the corridor were stands and displays of cakes and wedding paraphernalia, all beautifully decorated and artfully arranged.  The mini cupcakes and pink macaroons were so well done I actually thought they were fake displays rather than edible, so it took me several passes before it dawned on me that actually, they were real cakes and yes, you could try one.  For someone who always manages to look as they they have just gone through a bush backwards, this kind of  elegance is something akin to falling down the rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland!

#marthablogger event was packed!

At the end of the corridor, there were also displays of kitchen equipment and hampers that were mobbed, so I watched those from a safe distance, but realised afterwards that everyone was interested in adding their business cards to the pot for prize draws.  Ah, silly me!  In the main hall where many other tables were hosted and the Editors and Marketing staff floated openly around the audience for impromptu chats, it was packed!

The arts and crafts table

For those of you interested in arts and crafts, there was a very interesting stand where the staff helpfully fielded questions, demonstrated equipment and showed off a few tricks.  Several of the bloggers were explaining to me that in these economic hard times, it was cheaper, easier and more fun to make their own cards using the ideas from the shows and magazines.

Scrapbooking was also mentioned, which seems to be quite a cottage industry here (yes, I had to look it up afterwards!).  I was amused to see a gadget in the swag bag later that turned out to be one of the white crimper things in the bottom left of the table. Apparently, they help you cut nice trims on cards and paper, so I’ll be sending mine over to Ann Godridge to review in a later post!

Not all the attendees were men

In case anyone was wondering, not all of the attendees were men.  In these days of green energy, it was amusing to see some human muscle being put to work in the form of a cute guy on a bike that had a fan belt attached to a blender.  What a great way to save electricity and generate all the smoothies needed for the party!

Another sign of the times is that many of the women I talked to at the party enthused about how there were doing more home entertaining rather than eating out.  Unsurprisingly, they saved both calories and dollars doing this, plus menus were healthier.  They all mentioned that both the magazines and TV shows were very helpful for ideas and suggestions in this regard.  The studio had a massive collection of books arranged by type and housed in windowed cupboards along the wall of the corridor.  A great way to curate a reference collection for program research.

Pet accessories

Pets are a big deal in America, with many households seemingly owning a dog, cat or fish, so it was no surprise to learn that the matching colour coordinated accessories and toys are also hugely popular, as the popular Pet section on Martha Stewart’s website also shows.

Ping Pong by the Hudson

In case any of you were wondering about the aforementioned ping pong, they had a super cool table at the far end of the room that looked as though it had been made out of a remnant of granite from one of the studio projects.  Clever idea.  You can also see the Chelsea Piers Sports Centre and Golf Club in the distance through the window by the Hudson River.

Raw materials for the studio projects

One of the things about the party that amused and interested me was the juxtaposition of the wedding displays and fancy cakes on one side of the large corridor with the bookcases and shelves of MDF on the other. These I learned from one of the staff were for building studio projects for the shows.  The sheets were neatly arranged by size and thickness.  Quite impressive that the attention to detail goes all the way down to this level.

While looking for the loos later, I spied a lit studio set up partially hidden by a wooden screen with what appeared to be a lit up Christmas tree.  They must film the shows in advance with all the scheduling, so perhaps it wouldn’t be so strange to film Holiday shows at the beginning of August!

All in all, I had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed myself, met some interesting people and came home with lots of ideas, especially on the food and cooking front and have now added the recipes to my RSS reader and also downloaded the iPhone app.

There was also the realisation that what we think of ‘home stuff’ is actually a big business and essentially now part of the entertainment business with TV and radio shows, blogs and magazines.

{Disclosures:  As per the FTC Guidelines, we are obliged to disclose any free goodies we are given from the event.  I took a photo of the contents of both the Martha and Kraft  bags (see below; by strange coincidence, my garden table is a Martha Stewart one from K-Mart). The free swag included magazines, foodstuffs, a water bottle, smellies and arts n crafts stuff.  No payment was received in the covering of this free event and all goodies were gratefully acknowledged by the recipient.}

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About Sally Church
Sally Church runs a Pharma and Biotech consulting company, Icarus Consultants, for companies looking for a fast track to market. You can find her on Twitter @maverickNY
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