Magazine Publishers of America
From Their House to Yours: Hearst’s House Beautiful Creates Second Annual Kitchen of the Year at Rockefeller Center
By Tony Case
There is no better place to get attention for your magazine than to set up shop right in the middle of New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza, at the height of the summer tourist season.
Hearst Magazines’ 113-year-old shelter title House Beautiful is doing just that the week of July 20, with its second annual Kitchen of the Year, helmed by Food Network star and HB Contributing Editor Ina Garten (pictured right), aka the “Barefoot Contessa.” The event coincides with New York’s popular summertime “foodie” events Restaurant Week and Tastes of Summer.
Despite the challenging times, Kitchen of the Year has expanded from three days last year to five this year. HB’s VP/Publisher Kate Kelly Smith points out that not only is the event longer in duration, it also has attracted more sponsors (19 in all, versus 14 last year) and more than doubled the ad pages from sponsor companies.
Kitchen of the Year will feature the products of various, diverse HB partners, among them KraftMaid, Shaw, CaesarStone, Crate and Barrel, Restoration Hardware, Cuisinart, Viking, Kohler, Ziploc, Stacy’s Pita Chips and Toshiba, among others. Participating restaurants include such Manhattan favorites as The Sea Grill and Magnolia Bakery. Selected products and materials from the kitchen will be donated to the charity Habitat for Humanity.
The kitchen—featuring 2,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space—was inspired by Garten and designed by Robert Stilin, known for his warm, contemporary style. Visitors to the dream kitchen will be able to explore Garten’s signature style—a kitchen where guests want to gather, and where functionality and cooking solutions are top of mind—as well as the culinary creations of some of the best-known chefs around. (HB has created a microsite devoted to the event, at www.housebeautiful.com/KOTY.) The Kitchen of the Year will be featured in the October issue of HB and on its site, which will include videos, podcasts and other special content.
HB’s Editor-in-Chief Stephen Drucker says that nowadays, “a big live-in kitchen is everybody’s favorite room.” And the magazine refers to the kitchen as “the new American living room, and a room worth celebrating in a big way.”
VP/Publisher Kelly Smith stresses the importance of such events for strengthening the vitality of the brand. “It’s a very creative moment, and a very exciting time for us—you have to make it happen, you can’t sit back and expect it,” she says. “You have to be in front, creating the opportunity for advertisers to spend—and if you create events that are different, they will do it.”
Kelly Smith also reports that 50 percent of HB’s advertisers through the August issue are new to the magazine this year—a remarkable achievement, especially in these times. New advertisers include a diversity of brands, both endemic and non-endemic to the shelter category, among them Estee Lauder, Ethan Allen, Hellmann’s, Infiniti, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Sub-Zero, Toshiba and Verizon.
HB has high hopes that this year’s kitchen will provide even more exposure for the brand than last year’s highly successful event, which itself attracted an estimated 10,000 visitors. Besides the microsite, Kitchen of the Year will garner massive exposure via ads atop taxicabs, in-store signage at retailers including Crate and Barrel and Zabar’s, outreach via area hotels and trade associations, promotions by way of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, email blasts, and segments on NBC’s “Today” (headquartered just across the plaza from the kitchen).
Additionally, Mayor Mike Bloomberg declared the week of the event “House Beautiful Kitchen Week at Rockefeller Center.” The promotional benefits will continue even after the event wraps, as Rockefeller Center will convert the kitchen into a watering hole dubbed Bar 30 by House Beautiful, which will operate through Labor Day weekend.
Says Kelly Smith, “We’ve really taken all we learned from last year and ramped it up.”
