Top Chef - Brilliant Marketing Geniuses

I am a reality tv junkie and love watching Bravo TV's Top Chef and its cheftestants. These cheftestants are up and coming chefs that most of the viewers haven't heard of. But in watching these people throughout a season, viewers come to know their talents and personalities and make opinions about them. Whether bad or good, these cheftestants are now cheflebrities. Some of the cheflebrities are capitalizing on their fame and culinary skills, for instance Carla Hall is now a co-host on ABC's The Chew.

This upcoming season of Top Chef marks its 10th season, but the show isn't the only place you see the Top Chef brand. They've added spin off shows including Top Chef Masters and Life After Top Chef. They have also taken the brand and created experiences that allow viewers opportunities to interact with the cheftestants as well as the hosts.

Top Chef Kitchen, located in NYC, will host various cheftestants that are preparing a tasting menu for the general public to enjoy. This limited time engagement runs through November 18, 2012 and takes reservations through OpenTable. Service runs from Tuesday through Sunday and two new cheftestants run the kitchen each week. A four course prix fixe menu will set you back $95 ($125 with wine pairings), but you're able to experience cuisine you may not even heard of. This week at Top Chef Kitchen Tiffany Derry (season seven, Top Chef: DC) is preparing mascarpone ravioli, crispy ruby red trout, pork belly and southern banana pudding. The second chef this week is Paul Qui (winner of season nine's Top Chef: Texas) who is preparing onion (yes, that's the name of his first course), poached chicken wings, roasted chicken and buttermilk sorbet. These chefs are able to demonstrate their skills to the public, but really, this gives an even larger push to the Top Chef brand. Making it a limited time engagement makes it that more exciting and forces the public to act now. Here's what one reviewer had to say, "The staff was fantastic, friendly and attentive. Everyone from Bravo was great! Watching the show from the start, it was great to try the chef's food and actually taste what they were judged on." If only I lived in NYC.

The next marketing event that the marketing geniuses from Bravo TV and Top Chef cooked up is a cruise from April 11-15, 2013. Again it's a limited time engagement, but a captive audience, only limited by the number of spots available on the ship. Top Chef: The Cruise is hosted by two of the Top Chef judges, Gail Simmons and Tom Colicchio. In addition interactive events, demonstrations and the ability to taste food from the top judges there's a Q&A with the hosts, the two Top Chef Masters and the 12 cheftestants. You can enjoy this cruise on the Celebrity Constellation ship for a bargain price of $799 (based on double occupancy), but don't forget to add in the $299 for taxes, fees and booking charges. And if you want to drink, you should probably add the beverage package at $255. So all in all, you're looking at almost $1,400 for an interior room, but you're able to be part of an experience and special event. Many of the rooms are already sold out.

For someone that is enthralled with the Top Chef series (and even gets excited to watch reruns), this is an event that gives viewers and the public an opportunity that they wouldn't have otherwise to interact with the people they see on tv. These events are beneficial to the brand because it generates more interest and more of a loyal following to the shows from the people that are able to participate. It's also great from a marketing perspective because it's a time limited engagement, but the impact is huge. Bravo TV and Top Chef are also doing a good job of promoting these events and their shows through social media. It's obvious they have a comprehensive marketing and communications plan that is geared towards building their brand and their tv viewer base.

Webpage Not Found

I'm finally getting around to reading the September issue of Entrepreneur and I see an article titled, "To Pin or Not to Pin" that discusses Pinterest. If you still haven't heard about Pinterest yet, it's the fastest growing social media site and membership continues to grow at ridiculous rates. You "pin" something that you see from the Internet and people can "repin" that pin to their "boards" and "like" your pin as well.

Some businesses have already seen the potential marketing value in using this free website and have created corporate accounts for their brands. Using Pinterest from a corporate perspective is all fine and dandy, but as with everything, you need to be able to track a ROI.

Enter MarketMeSuite, a company (according to the Entrepreneur article I read) allows companies to "enter their company's URL and instantly see how many pinners are promoting that company on Pinterest." Overcome with excitement at the potential of this new tracking tool, I opened my laptop to access the link printed in the magazine. To my disappointment, I received a "404 URL Not Found" error.

WHAT???

If MarketMeSuite promised in a magazine article (circulation of more than 600,000 by the way) they should be able to handle the response from the press. Public relations 101 really.

Let's say a company (we're talking in generic terms now) decided after an article was published on their product or service, that it just wasn't going to work out and they were going to use their resources on a different product or service. Fine and dandy, but have a backup plan. Post information on the URL that was published in that article to explain what happened with the product. Simple as that.

If you've decided to change the URL because it aligns better with getting organic users to your website, keep the URL that was originally published and have it redirect to the new URL. That way you keep the article readership continued on the path to use your product and service and you can still promote your new URL for marketing purposes.