{"id":6981,"date":"2010-02-28T14:33:49","date_gmt":"2010-02-28T12:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=6981"},"modified":"2010-03-06T11:35:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T09:35:02","slug":"usa-design-queen-stewart-flops-at-design-indaba-in-cape-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/usa-design-queen-stewart-flops-at-design-indaba-in-cape-town\/","title":{"rendered":"USA Design Queen Stewart flops at Design Indaba in Cape Town"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What was Ravi Naidoo, owner of Interactive Africa and ‘Mr Cool’, who boasts FIFA as a client, and organiser of\u00a013 Design Indaba’s to date, thinking when he decided to put Martha Stewart on the programme for the 2010 Design Indaba, which ended this weekend?<\/p>\n

Billing Stewart as the lead Design Indaba speaker on its website, Stewart was described as speaking about “Food Design” at the Conference part of the Design Indaba,\u00a0about\u00a0“the creative principles and practical ideas that have made her America’s most trusted guide to stylish living.\u00a0 Millions of consumers rely on Martha Stewart as their arbiter of style and taste and their guide to all aspects of everyday living – from cooking and entertaining to decorating and gardening, and much more”.\u00a0 Stewart’s profession is stated as : entrepreneur, TV host and author.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

None of these “credentials”\u00a0would have necessarily made Stewart eligible\u00a0as a speaker at a conference addressed and attended by the world’s top designers.\u00a0\u00a0So what went wrong?\u00a0Firstly, through Twitter, one could track Stewart’s movements around the country, from the time she left New York on SAA, praising the airline highly (sponsored ticket?), she was met in Johannesburg and taken on a safari to Singita (sponsored?), and then arrived in Cape Town, where she stayed at the One & Only Cape Town\u00a0(sponsored?).\u00a0 Stewart’s talk was mid-morning on day three.\u00a0 From her Tweets, it was clear that she had made no effort to attend any of the other talks on the first two days, choosing rather to go sightseeing and winetasting, but here her brand endorsements stopped.\u00a0\u00a0 It is the owners of the wine estates (which included Warwick and Graham Beck)\u00a0that made one aware of her stops there on Twitter.\u00a0\u00a0She did Tweet about her lunch at Waterkloof, mistakenly referring to it being in Stellenbosch!\u00a0 Given that she has close to 2 million followers on Twitter, this would have had a good marketing benefit for the Cape.<\/p>\n

At Design Indaba, the conference organisers as well as\u00a0bizcommunity.com, were Tweeting from the conference.\u00a0\u00a0 Here is the take on Martha Stewart’s talk by Louise Marsland, ex-editor of and writer for bizcommunity.com and editor of AdVantage magazine, who Twittered the whole Conference every few seconds:<\/p>\n

‘The always spectacular Design Indaba will this year be remembered, not only for the fabulous speakers such as Harry Pearce, Bruce Nussbaum, Priyush Pandey, Stefan Bucher, Mokena Makeke, etc, but for the worst presentation it’s (sic)\u00a0ever hosted – by famous \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchomemaker’ Martha Stewart. Who will also now be credited with launching the first local “twitcom”. [<\/span><\/em>view twitterfall<\/span><\/em><\/a>)\u00a0\u00a0 Delivering a presentation more suited to the Krugersdorp Vrouefederasie or the Belville (sic) Housewives Scrapbooking Circle, she managed to inspire a mass walkout in both auditoriums – practically unheard of in the history of Design Indaba, which is the industry’s premier conference and expo showcase in the creative industries and an inspiration destination annually.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/em>And so we get another twiord (twitter word): she was \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctwitter slapped’ (twitapped?) by the twitterverse. Twerrible.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0 The complaints centred around that fact that she used her presentation as a sales pitch (given how she is about to launch her \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMartha Stewart’s Cupcakes’ in South Africa) and spoke to these highly creative and key delegates with a lack of awareness that was astounding. With the likes of local agency heads and creative directors and world-renowned designers and architects in the audience, you don’t talk about doing \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcglitter by numbers’ pictures and show 29 pictures of yourself holding various farm life (unless that’s part of your creative installation!). The laughter was cringe worthy indeed. The result was a walkout.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em>Basically she was boring and out of touch and self-promotional. Everything that Design Indaba is not. Design Indaba is about collaboration, sustainability, social entrepreneurship, less conspicuous consumption and looking towards redesigning a new world where product has less impact on the environment. General opinion was summed up by the biting comment of MC Michael Bierut as Stewart left the stage: “Dr Craig Venter is to the human genome as Martha Stewart is to paint chips.” Ouch!The subtle quips continued through subsequent speakers in the afternoon on Friday with references to the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcmillions’ to be made out of design (not) and pleas for people not to put gold glitter on their food, or anything else for that matter. Speakers following her were thanked profusely for “showing us what Design Indaba is all about” by Bierut. Groans and laughter greeted each aside.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0 <\/span><\/em>Delegates who walked out gathered around Bizcommunity.com’s live \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctwitterfall’ screen outside the main auditorium which live-fed the deluge of tweets to delegates. “It was hysterical,” said one executive creative director of a leading SA ad agency. “The tweets were hugely entertaining, much more so than her speech!”\u00a0 <\/span><\/em>Another creative director pointed out that the real story was how fantastically social media worked in this case. “People didn’t like her… so they said so. That’s the real story. Brilliant.”\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/em>Delegates and journalists attending didn’t pull any punches, with scathing references to her \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclack of a glittering performance’ and the fact that she could write a book on \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHow to clear a room’, rather.’<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Interestingly Design Indaba, which ran its own Twitter feed, did not Tweet about Stewart after she arrived in the country, almost as if they could see a problem coming.\u00a0\u00a0 Every other speaker’s content was Tweeted about by them.\u00a0 There was a deathly silence surrounding Martha Stewart on @designindaba and Naidoo has not been seen to make any statements in the newspapers that have run prominent stories on this flop (Sunday Times, Weekend Argus)!<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Yesterday Stewart addressed\u00a0a less distinguished audience,\u00a0who paid\u00a0R 250 to attend a breakfast session sponsored by Woolworths.\u00a0\u00a0 From the blog and Twitter feedback it appears that Stewart used the same talk, but attendees had lowered their expectations, given the feedback about her talk the previous day.\u00a0\u00a0 Some\u00a0comments seemed self-justifying, others remained critical:\u00a0read Cape Town News Blog’s report here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stewart appeared unaffected by the furore,\u00a0happily continuing her Tweeting about beautiful Cape Town and hoping that she could get up Table Mountain, after the gale force southeaster winds had prevented her from accessing this design icon of the city.\u00a0 In fairness to her, she did not make any negative comments on Twitter about her visit to South Africa, and was gracious to her hosts and sponsors in acknowledging them, the main ones at least!<\/span><\/p>\n

Martha Stewart’s visit to Cape Town will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What was Ravi Naidoo, owner of Interactive Africa and ‘Mr Cool’, who boasts FIFA as a client, and organiser of\u00a013 Design Indaba’s to date, thinking when he decided to put Martha Stewart on the programme for the 2010 Design Indaba, which ended this weekend? Billing Stewart as the lead Design Indaba speaker on its website, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,124,21],"tags":[3697,3700,3699,2157,32366,3701,32378,3695,18,3703,3702,32369,226,3696,3698,3693,1094,3694,759,147,32388,32376,4,3159,1587,562,3598,32373,32382,171],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t