A Redhead Walks Into a Kitchen…

I’m a foodie.

Okay, not really, but I definitely enjoy food. Looking at it, smelling it, eating it, all those good things.

I can’t cook, however. And I’m a vegetarian. So there’s that.

However, I do appreciate some cooking shows, some Food Network, some series where Gordon Ramsay screams at contestants until they almost piss themselves in fear. This, combined with my fervent interest in competition-based, talent-centric, singing-free television, led to me to discover ‘MasterChef’.

What does this have to do with writing, with advertising, with anything?

Hold on, I’m getting there.

This past season—season five for those of you keeping track at home—saw probably my favourite competitor in all of the past seasons of the show, including the watered-down, but no-less-impressive ‘MasterChef Junior’. To be fair, I may be biased. Any time I see another woman with red hair, such as mine, I do a little mental ‘hurrah!’ and I feel we have some sort of intangible, immediate connection. We will bond over our gingerness, our recessive gene, our generous applications of SPF. With that in mind, it made sense that from the beginning, I was rooting for Elizabeth Cauvel.

But wait! There was more!

Not only was she a ginger, and a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen (spoiler alert: she came runner-up, behind winner Courtney Lapresi), but she was in advertising.

As an associate creative director.

At agency MRY.

In New York.

Of course, the producers behind Gordon Ramsay’s shows know that sometimes they are catering to the chefs-at-home, the couchside coaches, the wannabe cooks, and the kind of/not really foodies such as myself. “Associate creative director” leaves those outside of the industry scratching their heads. To solve this dilemma, they reduced her title, bleached out the interesting points of it, and dubbed her simply an “advertising executive”. But, as the old saying goes, you can take the woman out of the agency, but you can’t take the agency out of the woman when you put her in a televised cooking competition.

Cauvel was quoted in AdWeek as using her job experience as a way to enhance her creativity in her dishes. “When you come up with ideas for an ad campaign, you pull from pop culture, media, all your knowledge—those are your ingredients. You put those together like a recipe. That’s just like conceptualizing and creating great food.” This quote made me hungry, for food and for ideas. For thoughts, insights, words. I won’t turn things all cute and Hallmark-esque, by saying things like “a dash of insight” or “a pinch of humour”, but she’s right, the swirling myriad of daily brain garbage and good stuff that you draw from to make something gorgeous, profound, hilarious, terrifying. As a pop culture junkie myself, who uses far more references to obscure episodes of favourite TV shows than I should, I am eternally relieved that these things can become useful to me. I no longer have to pin all my hopes on winning a week’s worth of ‘Jeopardy’ games, because apparently that is actually a very long process to even get on the show (I’ve checked).

I’m using Cauvel as an example of not limiting yourself to your field. In advertising, we’re told to pick a specialty, hone your skills, be the best at that one thing. Don’t try to wear too many hats, don’t spread yourself too thin, don’t, don’t, don’t. Cauvel has shown that your skills can be transferrable, that what you have learned in your profession you can then pour into a hobby, and maybe that hobby can become one of your greatest, most recognizable achievements, out of a whole slew of other great, recognizable achievements. Creativity is fluid and I put that shit on everything.