Absolutely Inventive

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct 1, 2002 by Greg Lindsay

Byline: Greg Lindsay

A hot club in New York has a lifespan of about 60 seconds, and a club based on a magazine has even less. So goodbye, GQ Lounge, and hello, Club EW. As part of their pitch to be on Absolut Vodka's 2003 schedule, Entertainment Weekly's marketing team built a diorama of an Entertainment Weekly nightclub with rooms themed to various sections. Finding publisher David Morris' idea of "Let's buy a dollhouse and fill it with Entertainment Weekly stuff" a little impractical, a handful of designers and marketers put in two weeks of late nights with glue guns and sewing kits to bring the club to life. Absolut executives liked their handiwork enough to ponder underwriting a real Club EW to help promote a new Absolut flavor launching next year (but still haven't committed to buying space in EW). It'd be a nice return on a project that cost less than $1,000, although some employees became unhealthily attached. "We were sitting in on conference calls while sewing pillows," says executive marketing director Rose Bleszcz. "We really became obsessed."