Et Tu Tom Colicchio?

While watching the Oscars last night and waiting for Micky Rourke to win get robbed, I saw a commercial I hadn’t seen before.

It’s a nice restaurant and there’s a jazzy-rock beat going on in the background, and then the bulldog-shaped (that’s the New Yorker’s description, not mine) life-saving Tom Colicchio comes on the screen and starts talking about taste. At first, I thought he was shilling for some liquor, possibly Disaronno by the vibe of the commercial and the way he sits down at the bar and keeps going on and on about keeping it simple.

But then the bartender pours and it’s a Diet Coke. At first I felt let down, but then I started to wonder what Colicchio was doing lending his valuable chef-cred to Diet Coke. The answer is, of course, cold hard cash. Bu is Colicchio selling out by doing a Diet Coke commercial or is this simply a Colicchio-like move?

Colicchio is best known as a judge on Top Chef but since I’ve never seen an episode of Top Chef, I don’t know if this fits Colicchio’s character. From everything else I’ve read about him and seen of him and know about his Craft restaurants, it seems Colicchio is in this just for the buck.

When any celebrity starts shilling for a product, the results can have unintended consequences like Kathy Lee Gifford and Wal-Mart or Martha Stewart and Kmart. (Forbes has a slideshow of all the celebrity endorsements gone bad.) This is doubly-so for a chef like Colicchio who’s made his reputation on having good taste.

Historically, celebrity chefs have gone down one of two possible routes when it comes to endorsements. There’s the Wolfgang Puck way, where you try to plaster your name on as many different gadgets, cookbooks and frozen meals as you can, no matter the quality. The other route is the Paul Prudhomme way, where the chef works with the manufacturer on a limited number of high-quality products.

Colicchio has put out a couple of highly rated cookbooks and has restaurants on both coasts but it’s too early to tell if we’re a couple years away from Colicchio frozen pizza. The move to promote Diet Coke doesn’t seem like one in the right direction, but if he’s using the money from the commercial to open a Craft in Kansas City then the more power to him.