Supermarkets, television cooking shows, and integrated advertising

Abstract This chapter provides a case study of the integrated advertising that accompanies supermarket sponsorship of primetime television cooking shows. Using the Australian television shows MasterChef Australia, My Kitchen Rules, and Recipe to Riches as examples, it shows how supermarket brands are carefully integrated into program storylines in ways that seek to mitigate against growing consumer concerns about supermarket practices. These include storylines featuring happy and satisfied farmers that are designed to counter criticisms of major retailers’ treatment of farmers and suppliers, as well as those that present supermarket private labels as spaces of innovation and connection to the cooking practices of ordinary home cooks. The chapter will show how such strategies have significant implications for consumers, who are now subject to increasingly subtle advertising messages that are not always immediately recognizable as paid promotional content, and which require increasingly sophisticated media literacies to decipher.