Tuesday, April 3, 2007

So what's the Hype about Chef Revival?

I recently received the figures for the Top 10 Product Placements of 2006 in my Marketing Daily e-newsletter. Take a look at the list here, along with the top programs that used product placements. It was no surprise that Coca-Cola was number one due to its avid role in the reality-show phenomenon, American Idol, which was the individual program leader in product placement (see my previous post). Coca-Cola had 3,355 occurrences for the year. Other obvious notables included Nike, Dell, and Cingular. However, number two on the list was Chef Revival Apparel with 1,592 placements. What?! I thought to myself. I have never heard of this brand and I define myself as "highly aware" of the media now that I am deep into my IMC major. I decided to scope it out to see what Chef Revival is all about.

Chef Revival is an apparel and supply company that provides uniforms and cooking supplies for chefs. Sounds like any other food product company, right? Well, yes. The only difference is that it has no PR or marketing department - it has become known in the world from reality TV. Chef Revival provides all of the uniforms for Fox's Hell's Kitchen, which gave it some of the best brand showing of the TV season.

It all started when Kim de la Villefromoy wanted to launch a chef attire company that was set at affordable prices for common chefs. He did so and now, a popular, typical Revival jacket, which has "colored panels, fancy trims and is offered in a variety of lengths," costs around $60. Big-name chefs began to hear about the company and last September, Kim got a phone call from a friend that said that a TV production company was looking for apparel for a new show, Hell's Kitchen. Revival sent the show 40 sets of clothing and 20 sets of knives at no cost. Hell's Kitchen producers ended up choosing the Revival Metro jacket, "which displays the company logo much more prominently than its other models." Chef Revival is now reaping the benefits and free placement. The popularity of the cooking show has made it the second top placement of the year! Sounds nice to me!

It was also interesting to see that the Chicago Bears placed at number 5, due to the success of "According to Jim." Some interesting product placements indeed due to such simple programming. I wonder what 2007 will bring....

2 comments:

Kim Gregson said...

10 points

Unknown said...

Good article but not quite accurate.
You mentioned that the brand all started when Kim de la Villefromoy wanted to launch a chef attire company that was set at affordable prices for common chefs.
The truth is the brand was actually started by a guy called Tim Grubi. Kim was a customer of Tim's in Australia. Tim gave half of Tim,s business to Kim. So in the interest of truth the article should be corrected. Tim still runs Chef Revival in Australia.