I just went to a talk by a Senior Unilever Executive about Marketing and Campaign Execution. On one of her sidetracks she mentioned about encouraging her daughter to be a food stylist.

She tells us that there is only a handful of food stylists in the country and that’s already today when food styling is starting to get attention. Back then, during the earlier days of her career, there was only one. And that one food stylist did all the food styling for all the commercial advertisements of big companies.

Our speaker continues that the food stylist she mentions can make ice cream look cool and delectable despite of the heavy lighting of shooting. She can perfectly bounce a tomato and other vegetables. She can make peanuts do back flips and mozzarella cheese stretch a meter long. Such tricks the food stylist perfected from an extensive work experience making him/her (I didn’t get whether it’s a she or he) the most sought after food stylist today despite the emergence of other food stylists. That food stylist demands a fee of P500,000, around $10,000! Wow.

But can you imagine how it was like during the early days of that food stylist’s career?

• How exactly did he/she land the job? Where did she look for the job, the classified ads? During that time, I don’t even think the term food stylist was already in use.

• And how exactly did he/she told his/her parents about his/her career choice?

• Did he/she even know that he/she would make such an amount now then? Was this all planned?

And how rich is he/she now? There is always a new food commercial every other week at a conservative estimate. If he’s/she’s been doing this for a long time now and earns P500,000, she should be very very rich by now. Well, even doing one makes her very rich, $10,000 rich.

So how can that food stylist demand a fee of $10,000? Well, what she does is very specialized not to mention rare to find as well. Is there even a school for what he/she does? That plus being the best in it and being very well experienced gives her the bargaining power to demand a fee of $10,000. How lucky is that food stylist?!