Photo: Rev Stan/Flickr
Tom Urell
In one of the fast edits during the “Quickfire” challenge on last week’s Top Chef episode, cheftestant Kevin Gillespie said that when he wanted to make an intensely flavored sauce, he “reached for [my] non-stick Calphalon saucepan” (or something). He probably wasn’t paid to say that, but it’s more than likely that he is under contract to make such endorsements when asked by the Bravo producers. To me, it changed the tone of the challenge. Yes, the entire series is laden with product sponsorships, products that are then used in the show (e.g., “the GE Monogram collection cookware” or “the Glad family of products”). But why is a contender making at all what is basically a pitch for a saucepan?
High-gloss cooking shows are absurdly expensive to produce. I can only imagine how much it must cost to make a season of the Food Network’s Next Iron Chef, which wrapped up a few weeks ago. The series starts in Los Angeles, goes to Tokyo and ends in New York, where the new Iron Chef is crowned in “Kitchen Stadium.” I was turned off, after enjoying a few of the early episodes of the season, by the challenge in Tokyo, where the cheftestants were instructed to use Kikkoman products to produce umami. Whether or not umami is a legitimate flavor/taste element, this challenge made it really hard to tell if the chefs are cooking to win or cooking to sell products (and advertising). Does it matter?
The Food Network doesn’t seem to shy away from the use of products as sponsorship and as elements within the content of the shows themselves. A Kikkoman umami ad played during every commercial break in the umami episode of Next Iron Chef. And here’s the description from foodnetwork.com of an episode clip:
“The four remaining chefs board an American Airlines flight and travel to Tokyo, Japan. The chefs begin a culinary adventure into the world of umami (a Japanese term for ‘delicious’ that is used to describe the fifth taste). First the chefs arrive at a traditional Japanese yakitori grill restaurant where they are asked to use Kikkoman soy sauce to infuse umami into their dishes and enhance the flavor profiles of a variety of ingredients.”
If this had been printed in a magazine, it would have probably had “advertisement” over the top of the page to distinguish it from the editorial content. But television doesn’t seem to acknowledge a line between content and advertising, at least not in cooking shows.
Give us your take. Does it matter that many cooking shows are saturated with products, named as sponsored or placed silently in the scene? What about on blogs, where it may not be clear if the author is paid to endorse a product (at least until the new FTC guidelines take effect)? Share your thoughts on the often-blurred lines between content and advertising.
Tom, I agree with you 100%. I love to watch cooking shows, and these endorsements really bother me, including the Kikkoman one. It was overkill and annoying. If they had simply asked the chefs to create dishes with umami and then run the ads saying Kikkoman adds umami, they would have achieved the same effect without alienating their audience.
I feel the same way about bloggers. If they receive products for free and write about them, they should disclose that. Otherwise, they are violating the trust they have with their readers, who value their opinion. As an editor (my day job), drawing this line comes naturally for me, and I recognize that many food bloggers don’t have that background, so I certainly understand that this is a learning process for them.
I immediately noticed when Kevin mentioned using the Calphalon nonstick pan and thought it sounded incredibly out of place. My firts question was whether Calphalon paid for that mention.
As a blogger who does receive and review freebies, I always disclose what I’ve been given. It’s a must in my opinion. A review cannot be taken seriously if full disclosure is not provided. (Like Jill, above, my day job is as an editor as well, so full disclosure is natural to me too.)
I’ll join the chorus here. It is so important to me that these relationships are disclosed. There are so many variables that go into cooking well and it is great to understand the decisions that went into the selection of cookware, ingredients, etc.
In addition to disclosures on cooking shows, I would love to see similar disclosures in magazines. When I see reviews of great new products, I always wonder how the magazine chose that product and if they’d ever print a review of product they *didn’t* like.
Hi Jill, Megan, Mary- Thank you for your comments. It really makes me nervous looking at magazines that we know are in rough shape, but I’m heartened that there are bloggers who take the issue seriously, at least!
With a show like Top Chef, I don’t think disclosure is really the issue, because it’s not the Washington Post, it’s cheesy (and very entertaining) American commercial TV….and they make it pretty clear they’re shilling for their advertisers. The question for me is where they are on the sleaze meter and at what point do they alienate the faithful. It’s all about common sense, restraint and taste, so to speak.
Sure, it would be nice if they chose not to plug their advertisers at all during the body of show…but it’s not a perfect world and I doubt most of us object to having Glad storage containers used…as long as they’re not shoving them in our faces all night long.
But having a Kikkoman unami ad running repeatedly during an umami episode is not smart and very risky…because it smacks of a too-cozy relationship with the advertiser….and people smell a rat when that happens….which is not a good thing on a cooking show, unless it’s called Ratatouille.
I wonder, by the way, if Kevin, in saying he was reaching for his non-stick Calphalon saucepan might have been poking a little fun at the shameless promotional part of the show. If he wasn’t, and was prompted to say something or, God forbid, paid for the plug – then that’s way over the line and totally amateurish. I don’t think people will put up with that sort of bush league pandering for very long.
Getting on an “American Airlines flight” may be a little clumsy but it’s not a major offense in my book, again, as long as they don’t beat us over the head with it….but using “Kikkoman soy sauce to infuse the umami” on a show that’s supposed to be about high-end cooking sounds a lot like “using Cheese Whiz to make the Gougeres.” It just doesn’t fit, and is an obvious, and potentially life-threatening sell-out.
If they do that too much, they’ll probably have to pack up their knives…and go home.
i think it’s kind of obvious (especially on top chef), when things are from an advertiser. i think it’s easier to take things off the cuff if you know more about certain products. when you’re trying to learn about things (like cookware) yourself, it’s hard to know what to trust, even if there is full disclosure!
You want to know how much it bothers me? We dont have cable for one. Two we rarely watch regular tv. I only watch Biggest Loser which is loaded with product sponsorship. It bothers me so much that I am thinking of giving up the show. So I totally agree with you. I am so sick of the “programming” of large corporations. My kids only know PBS too. I wish a lot more people would become annoyed with commercials. I know it helps pay for tv but where do we draw the line?