Semi-Homemade Mag Blurs Line Between Advertising And Editorial

[Pluff Mudder]

Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Magazine Blurs Advertising and Editorial

February 3, 2009, 9:00 am

Say what you will about Sandra Lee and her kitchen philosophy of "70 percent store-bought, ready made plus 30 percent fresh allows you take 100 percent of the credit." Her food is generally atrocious, but who cares? She's too easy of a punching bag.

But her magazine — that's another story. The first issue of this publication just hit the newsstands, and it completely crosses the line — each recipe is an advertorial, each advertorial is a recipe. It's literally a challenge to know what's what (the amateurish design doesn't help) — Out of 51 recipes in the magazine, 37 call out an advertiser's product by name. There's a section featuring dinnerware from Ikea and Crate and Barrel, URLs and all — are those sponsored, too? It's impossible to tell.

Sandra Lee Semi-Homemade Magazine Blurs Advertising and Editorial - Eat me daily

[Food Network Fan]

It would almost have to be in order to publish her recipes. If she only uses ready made products she has to list the product she is using.

Cleaver way to try and cash in for her though. It's not like she's a chef displaying an art form. Her deal is making things from grocery products. I can't fault her for it if she can make it successful. I am sure most people would love the chance to do that.

[isilzha]

I thought most recipes in magazines did that anyway. Maybe she does it more than others, but if its ok sometimes, why not all the time?

Ditto FNF.

[BerryBaby]

I have a cookbook of recipes from the 50's that all came off of product packaging. It mentions all the products by name.

That period of time was big on using those recipes. Bisquick is still very popular today with their recipes.

I admit I used their coffee cake recipe a couple of months ago, but added my choice of fruit, which were blueberries. It was good.

[Pluff Mudder]

In the cooking mags I get, the only recipes I see with a product name in the recipe are those from a cooking contest that has been sponsored by the said product or it's a ad for the product that happens to have a recipe in it.

You can still get some of those product cookbooks, but no where the number that was available many years ago. I've got a group of them that was my granny's from companies like Rumford, Softsilk, etc., some dating back to the 1930's.