Great British Menu is a long running TV cookery programme. Chefs compete to impress a group of judges with dishes that will be served at a banquet hosted at the end of the season.
Each year has a theme (Animation and Illustration in 2023), and the chefs need to connect their dishes to the theme.
The judges are the audience in this experience, and the chefs that perform the best as those that have considered the needs of the audience and adapted to them.
Excellent cookery is a baseline requirement. The banquet element plays a big part, the food should be exciting as well as taste great. The theme is also key. Cook a good dish and link it poorly to the theme, and you won’t be well rewarded.
The long running nature of the programme is also interesting. Certain types of dishes do well, others less so. The main course is the focal point, and shared dishes that are big and impressive often do especially well.
However, dishes that are essentially a ‘picnic’ can fare less well, as they can end up being considered a group of things rather than a coherent whole. There are levels to understanding what the audience wants!
A chef can cook the most technically accomplished dish, and lose out to someone who takes more account of the brief and spends the time to understand what the judges have loved in the past and what they might like in the future.
You can bring this back to your own situation. Think about the audience of your work. What can you find out about them? What do they like? What are they less keen on? What gets a safe 7, vs when might you take a risk to get a 10?
Doing the technically best thing out of context often fails. Don’t make that mistake.
James Osborn 