The Masterchef juggernaut lumbers on and in an attempt to milk the franchise for all it is worth Masterchef Inc. cross promotes every dish with Coles (the place you "shop where a Masterchef shops") frequently using Curtis Stone who appears both on the program as an occasional judge and fronting Coles' "Feed Your Family For Under $10" ads.
Last week two of the contestants on Masterchef were in a "fix the dish" competition using "Coq Au Vin". This week (Herald-Sun pg 8, July 8) there is, not suprisingly, a FYFFU$10 promotion using a recipe for "Coq Au Vin". To demonstrate that it indeed costs no more than $10 they list the ingredients (eg. 1 medium red onion, diced - $0.26). Included is "500mL dry red wine (from the pantry)" with nothing added to the total cost for this ingredient. 500mL is hardly a dash, it is 2/3 bottle wine FFS. Even a bottle of cheap cooking wine would cost $7-8. If anyone knows a restaurant that considers 2/3 bottle of wine to be not worth adding to the bill please let me know.
Why do this? Well without including the wine the cost of the dish is estimated at $7.59. With the wine included it would be at least $12. So to keep it under $10 they just ignore the cost of one of the two main ingredients (chicken & wine, the clue is in the name). Is this a deliberately misleading ad? It sure is, and it also shows how desperate the Masterchef franchise is to wring every last $ out of its viewers in increasingly dubious cross promotions. Fix the Dish? More like Fix the Price.
Update Oct 26 2010: Choice Magazine have just announced their annual "Shonkys" for deceptive advertising and guess who topped the list? Yes, Coles for their FYFFU10 campaign that's who. And the example they used was the Coq au Vin. Yay for the truth! Sadly the response of Coles was to deny there was a problem (the first mistake when you get caught out - always admit you were wrong and seek forgiveness).
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