Bernard Matthews Farms' decision to launch a range of co-branded products with Marco Pierre White extends its relationship with the celebrity chef, who will also front a campaign to promote its turkey.
Matthew Pullen, marketing director at Bernard Matthews, claims that White was the ideal choice to represent the brand, not least because the chef started his career deboning turkeys.
However, some observers have suggested that the link between the two is rather tenuous. Indeed, there is a wider view that food brands opting for a tie-up with any celebrity chef are choosing an easy and rather predictable strategy.
Mercenary motives
Hamish Pringle, director general of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and author of Celebrity Sells, says: 'I think the juxtaposition of Marco Pierre White and Bernard Matthews lacks credibility. Anyone who knows anything about cooking will assume Marco is in it for the money.'
Pringle has noted a more general cynicism among the public about celebrity endorsement and insists that most people are astute enough to realise that the stars are more interested in lining their products than any higher purpose.
While Sainsbury's has used Jamie Oliver (who famously attacked Bernard Matthews' Turkey Twizzlers product for its high fat and salt content) as the mainstay of its advertising since 2000, eyebrows were raised when the more upmarket chain Waitrose enlisted Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith to front its ads.
Carl Ratcliff, head of planning at Waitrose's ad agency MCBD, says that the juxtaposition of culinary innovator Blumenthal with Smith, the queen of home-cooking, was a deliberate conceit to show how imaginative recipes could easily be made at home using Waitrose ingredients.
However he believes such tie-ups are prone to fall apart when a celebrity chef departs from their core skill set, citing Oliver's recent advertising spot for Sainsbury's sausages as an example. 'The idea of Jamie Oliver chasing after a sausage in a field appears a little desperate. Oliver is a TV star now, and a campaigner, not a chef,' adds Ratcliff.
While Sainsbury's was unavailable to comment on its use of Oliver, some believe that his ongoing appeal as a brand ambassador outweighs any harm caused to the supermarket chain by his occasional controversial outbursts or unfortunate pictures of his wife shopping at Waitrose.
Glen Tutssel, executive creative director at Brand Union, says: 'His personality is inextricably linked to Sainsbury's. He also endorses his own brands of products which adds to his credibility.'
Rural associations
Similarly, Tutssel argues that White, who also fronts ads for Knorr, is likely to prove a suitable brand spokesman for Bernard Matthews as he has a distinctive personality that can be applied to a diverse range of brands. Indeed, further endorsements by White of other suitable rural products - such as Barbour or Land Rover - could actually enhance the association forged by Bernard Matthews.
Ultimately, though, the sheen may soon wear off these endorsements. Tutssel adds: 'Consumers will get sick of celebrity chefs and, when we finally come out of the recession, people will be more careful about spending on celebrityfronted products.'
Even if this is the case, Pringle contends that their use taps into a strong current in the nation's psyche. 'There is an almost endless appetite for cookery books and programmes as people use them as a displacement activity: the less they cook themselves, the more they read about it or watch other people doing it.'
By partnering White, Knorr and Bernard Matthews clearly hope to move their brands upmarket but this is surely dependent on whether celebrity chefs can maintain their own cachet.