Top Chef Marketing Blitz

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Chefs from Auguste Escoffier to Wolfgang Puck have been marketing products with their name to extend their brands outside of restaurants and catering. But what about marketing that involves not one, but many chefs – in fact, not chefs at all, but a TV show about chefs competing with each other – how sellable are products with Top Chef branded on them? It turns out, that brand is more lucrative then you might think. Bravo Media already markets Top Chef: The Cookbook (Chronicle 2008), and now it has announced more licensing partnerships in a press release. It will publish a new cookbook, Top Chef: The Quickfire Cookbook, with plenty of "interviews with producers, chef'testants from past seasons, and other inside dish that fans will love." And perhaps a few useful recipes? But that is not all to come out of the Top Chef franchise. Bravo has signed a deal with Master Cutlery, the "largest importer of knives in the U.S. for the "Top Chef" Master Cutlery Knives" for release this summer on Bravo's website. The Top Chef brand will be slapped on wine: Bravo Media has partnered with Terlato Wines International, the leading marketer of luxury wines in the United States, to launch "Top Chef" co-branded wine, which will be available in retail and grocery stores in late 2009. This partnership brings together the cooking expertise of "Top Chef" and the wine knowledge and food pairing experience from Terlato. With Wolfgang's products, at least you can put a chef's name behind the choices. But who has the cooking expertise of Top Chef? Will Tom Colicchio, his guest chefs and all the contestants choose or producers, or who? Don't many of them have competing brands of their own? In addition, after you've bought the book, knives, and wine, you can buy a bouquet from Teleflora with the Top Chef name on it to send it all to your mom if her birthday fall after August 2009 when the flowers will be available. They'll arrive with recipes and a mixture of flowers, fruit, and vegetables. Finally, if you need more Top Chef, then how about learning from the chefs? Bravo Media is partnering with LightSpeedVT and Post Oak Productions to create "Top Chef VT," a subscription-based online cooking class. "Top Chef VT" will feature interactive content, multimedia lessons, recipes and much more. Fans of the show will have access to exclusive content and cooking classes, taught by the chef'testants, from the comfort of their own homes. Let's hope that means the chef'testants who do well. So, this is a blitz from Bravo to make sure we've gotten the message that Top Chef is the hottest cooking show on television. Previous articles: Stephanie Izard: Life After Top Chef Top Chef New York: About Time Top Chef Junior Rocco DiSpirito: Top Chef Chicago Top Chef's Tom Colicchio Courts Sara Lee Tom Colicchio: Top Chef 2 Top Chef 2: Already Casting Top Chef: Tom Colicchio Padma Lakshmi: Tangy Tart Hot Sweet Tom Colicchio: Top Chef 2 Carrie Nahabedian Knocks Top Chef Top Chef 2: Already Casting Top Chef: Harold Dieterle Won Top Chef: Taste of the Nation Top Chef: Tom Colicchio [Chefs & Branding - complete] [Food Television - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, cookbooks, cookbook reviews --> back to Super Chef