Canterbury A&P Show 2023
November 18, 2023
By NZB3
Something wasn’t going right with the Canterbury A&P Show this year. For one thing, they re-named themselves New Zealand Agricultural Show by dropping the ‘pastoral’ from the title but that’s been wrong since 2018. I visited on Thursday the 16th between rainstorms so it was sunny and pleasant and not too busy. Last year was a Friday with hot dusty wind and a crush of people. Based on this visit I found the Show swimming in an atmosphere of vendors and vendor cortisol because they’re tripping over each other to sell things and the people who do show up aren’t buying. You could see the pain on their faces if they weren’t outright telling you.
Even on the way in it wasn’t too inviting. We asked a big Pacific Island high-vis guy where to park (why did we do that? Never ask others questions like that when you can make up your own answers!) He directed us to somewhere near him. So, we ignored that and drove right by his suggestion to within a short walk of the entry gate. Saved about 15mins of pointless walking. Greeted by his twin brother only slightly smaller who blipped out QR code ticket then returned to staring at the dirt or his phone; Same-same. I don’t think the Show sparks joy for these blokes.
Inside, the vendors are in pain. One example of the hurt was on the front page of the Press. An ice cream vendor was hurting because they were positioned right next to MacDonalds (what are they doing there anyway?) Maccas were giving away free ice cream. Oops. Tripping each other up.
An example of my disappointment was the Rare Breeds display this year. They’re not making any money but even they seemed fairly phoned-in. Missing the best bit, the Enderby Island rabbits, because, they told me, there was a virus about so they all had to stay at home. Can’t have helped their mood to have a display of extinct species front-and-center. Using some of the repurposed plastic gravestones The Warehouse are selling on reduced-to-clear after Halloween last month we were told about a veritable animal holocaust occurring before us. Bricks around the inscription were evidently supposed to give concrete examples of the lost but even by Thursday nobody had followed up by laying down the empirical support data. But this is focus on the negative rather than bringing our attention to the good work the Rare Breeds Society do in saving New Zealand’s special animals. Sad.
Should have taken a photo of that display as it sums up the entire Show based on my visit. It really needs to bounce back from the COVID Panic that shut it down for years. What needs to be rebuilt isn’t the balance books so much as the heart of it upon which all else relies. Remember, The Show is New Zealand’s largest isn’t it? And it’s the rationale behind Canterbury’s Public Holiday. You must not leverage that down the river for a cheap pay day. Mind you, everyone else is doing that…
It was like a newspaper with too many adverts and not enough content. Over-saturated. These shows rely on an authentic atmosphere of a community which organisers seek to leverage for cash. Like other media (TV, press, social, radio,..) cynical managers are over-leveraging the authentic content and driving it out so they can sell the space to another fast food trailer. There comes a tipping point.
My Facebook feed isn’t what it used to be; Mostly just strangers’ adverts now not friend’s sharing.
My TVNZ news led last night with Simon Dallow advertising a Netflix show (The Crown) behind pretend controversy as if it were “news.” Does anyone think Seven Sharp is other than an infomercial?
Country Calendar used to be great and FOR rural people. Now it’s FOR city people and an apologist for rural people. Trying (in a way I don’t approve of, mind you) to get Muggles to like farmers and rural life by representing it as something “sustainable”/plastic-free/animal-friendly/Woke/Environmentalist. I think Federated Farmers have probably supported this weak re-branding since they’ve done the same thing. That’s why Groundswell New Zealand emerged to do the job. Country New Zealanders shouldn’t consent to their media being turned into an apology. Better to tell the Townies who don’t like what’s offered to them in the marketplace to bugger off. In a free society it’s safe to be unpopular.
TV, radio, social media, and the Show are all top-heavy with fake content and lite on authentic substructure. We’re deep in the Kayfabe Zone. Still showing up to watch and attend but just out of habit, ritualistically. There’s only a wiff left of what was.
Re-branding the name of the Show was a bad option. So was moving the show from Addington because it cut out the nostalgia factor so important to the Canterbury Show’s brand. It used to be that we could go to the show and remember the same corners and buildings we saw as young children and that our grandparents saw as young children. Just being at the Show would trigger those good memories and re-enforce the brand experience no matter the weather or food or entertainment or sales. That element of the experience was surrendered back in 1997 so they’re in it now.
I’d rather go to a little country A&P Show that hasn’t been flogged into the ground. Maybe putting Tracy Ahern, a cosmetic beauty therapist, at the head of the Show is where they went wrong? It’s what’s inside that counts.
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