Have you noticed the growing trend towards overblown hyperbole? It struck me as we looked through menus, bars blackboards, and tourist leaflets that every item seemed to have a hyperbole attached to it – not ‘beer’, but ‘award winning beer’. On reflection, I don’t think this is an exclusively Aussie characteristic but perhaps generally redolent of an age dominated by ‘style over substance’. A ‘Good Food’ sign seems to adorn every pub these days and one can understand why that would seem more attractive to ‘Fairly mediocre Brake Brothers micro-waved food’. The use of hyperbole in this way has, I suspect, been around since the dawn of branding, and it’s not that which bothers me – it’s the use of totally unsubstantiated hyperbole. We were in a very small town for coffee (pause for shock revelation) and the small town had two establishments opposite each other – a butcher and the café /baker. The butcher boasted of his ‘award winning pies’ and the café of their ‘award winning Australian coffee’ – neither revealed the provenance of their awards so we were left to guess ‘by whom they were gifted’ and ‘what the awards were for’. I think the pies won an award from the baker for ‘best non-competing bakery product in Tasmania’ and the café received the accolade from the butcher for ‘tastiest low-cholesterol product in Australia’ – but I will never know!
