This woman is holding what actually is an essential part of any continuous marketing campaign for many products and brands in Australia...
Showbags, or show bags (both spellings are fine)
🎪 Most towns around Australia hold an annual agricultural show known as a "Royal Show". The Royal Easter Show in Sydney is the biggest, but most other major Australian cities have their own Royal Shows in August (Brisbane's "Ekka") or September. It's a major event! Actually, it's "show time" right now in my home city of Adelaide.
Royal Shows feature:
🥇 agricultural competitions for livestock, pets, handcrafts, flowers, food, beverages and displays of skill (woodchopping and sheepshearing in particular)
🐑 plenty of animals – great for city kids to get close up to farm animals
🚜 several pavilions with exhibitor stands traditionally pitched at a rural market (anyone for a stump-jump plough?), as well as to the general suburban public (usually big brands)
🎡 a funfair with rides like the "scary" ghost train
🌭 ample (and overpriced) fast food and drink, such as dagwood dogs (like US corn dogs) and (more recently) potato twistas
But no Australian Royal Show is complete without showbags! 🛍️
So what are showbags?
Unique to Australia, they're themed bags of commercial products, novelty items and promotional merchandise, available to buy from the many stalls and (in the big cities) a dedicated showbag pavilion at Royal Shows across Australia. Showbags have established a place for themselves in the collective history of generations of Australians.
Starting off as free or budget-priced "sample bags" with products for marketing purposes, showbags took their current form in the 1970s and continue to be very popular. Primarily aimed at children, showbags usually come as a glossy, huge shopping bag filled with chocolates/sweets ("lollies" in Australia) and/or novelty items, while adult-pitched showbags usually have more useful contents.
All major confectionary and many food producers release their own showbags, usually showcasing a product (e.g. Mars Bars, Smarties, etc.) or brand (Cadbury). Other showbags are movie-, TV- or toy-themed, such as ones for the Simpsons, Harry Potter, Barbie, etc. Actually, any product or service can have its own showbag, and often do.
The most popular showbag is the cheapest – the iconic Bertie Beetle showbag, which for decades was a boon at AU$2 a pop! Nowadays, expect to pay AU$15-$30 for most showbags (yep, expensive!). Despite the price, millions of showbags are sold every year.
And thanks to the internet, you no longer have to wait for the Royal Show to come to town to buy a showbag as they're now available online year-round.
To get an idea about what's in a showbag, check out this link, and perhaps you might be tempted to a buy one or a few.
Need someone to sort out your Bertie Beetles from the Hoadleys? Want to get more from your Australian audience with the right type of Australian text? Then talk to me! I'm only an email away at info@nicknasev.com
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