min magazine 2008 Most Intriguing: Kate Kelly Smith
Friday, November 7, 2008

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Kate Kelly Smith
Vice President/Publisher, House Beautiful

House Beautiful is home to Kate Kelly Smith. She was HB associate publisher from 1996 through February 2001, and she returned in her current role as VP/publisher in September 2006. So Thomas Wolfe was wrong—you can go home again. That’s been proven by HB’s 13 percent gain in advertising for January 2008 through September. That comes atop a 7 percent gain in 2007.

Credit innovation, such as HB’s “Kitchen of the Year” exhibit at New York’s Rockefeller Center, for the success. The kitchen was on display (and utilized) from July 15 through 17, as thousands of tourists were in New York for baseball’s All-Star Game, bringing tremendous additional positive response to the brand.

But positive impact has always been Smith’s signature. At Child, her first publisher’s job from 2001-2003, she built the fashion category with 21 and 22 percent ad page gains in 2002-2003. At Prevention, which she helmed from 2003-2005, she turned April 1’s “Walk to Work Day” into a staff challenge—and got heavyweight champ-turned-tycoon George Foreman to participate.

With HB editor-in-chief (since November 2005) Stephen Drucker, the focus has been on regaining the magazine’s impressive plateaus of the past. Exceeding 1,000 annual ad pages was the norm during Smith’s first stint, but that number has not been achieved since 2002. It won’t happen in 2008 either. She inherited a magazine that carried just 677 ad pages in 2006. But with Smith and her impressive bag of tricks, it won’t be long till everything is beautiful again.

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