The Mound - #36 VEGEMIGHT

Welcome to The Mound, a weekly newsletter in which we at Good One Creative pitch— for free — our solutions to the world’s problems.

I've been thinking about soft power recently, the way in which nations command kudos on the world stage for their (mostly) cultural exports. It's a habit worth quitting, if only because my office is too close to the souvenir shops of the CBD, and the wares in these places suggest our home is little more than a purveyor of plush marsupials and tokenistic fridge magnets.

When it comes to the question of selling Australia, we don't know what we are - or what we have beyond locations and funny-looking fauna.

It's a paralysing question - which we are all the slower to answer, because the tall poppy syndrome in us all but ensures that any search for our James Joyce could only reveal Barnaby. But in studying other countries' recent successes in the realm of soft power, we realise that we needn't encapsulate and then sell the whole of Australia. We could sell something as small as a snack.

Biscoff has had a very good ten years. In recent years they’ve grown more than 20% each year, have almost single handedly solidified Belgium's status as the world's premier chocolatier, and now social media (Tik Tok especially) has taken it upon itself to find endless use cases for the little treat, becoming cocktails and endless other desserts.

Another newsletter might at this point say that TimTams are just as good and ripe for global proliferation - but this newsletter is a straight-shooter. This newsletter dislikes licking its fingers and it gets kinda creeped out whenever grown adults say things like, 'nomnomnom' and 'yummy-yummy'.

Forget TimTams; more pressing is that, despite possessing a perfectly unique and wholly emblematic product, we have thus far failed to launch it overseas. That's right, let's sell some fucking Vegemite.

Here's how we fix it:

One could argue that Biscoff's success is largely due to its having so consistently aligned itself with the consumption of coffee, giving European and US consumers the opportunity to encounter, learn about, and then think of Biscoff multiple times a day. Could Vegemite do the same? Accepting that Americans will never swap Honey or Jelly for the vagaries of a salt-heavy breakfast spread, we could export the flavour instead, applying it to beer nuts - and insisting, outside of our borders, that Vegemite is most perfectly paired with an ice-cold bottle of beer.

You might say we've tried that already, that Vegemite Shapes are already a thing - but the problem with selling Vegemite-flavoured Shapes is that you're in effect asking a Yank to try two new products at the one time. It's too much, too many leaps for their fragile mouths.

And, if the ultimate goal here is to increase our standing through Vegemite, we shouldn't be trying to make this, to make ourselves palatable. In this light, Vegemite is the vodka of morning spreads; we can sell that!

You think this is offensive? We eat this shit for breakfast.

Vegemite is our answer to the world's wondering how we can survive in all this heat, how we can keep working out in the dead centre of the country, sweating all the time and never cramping up.

Pickle Juice is currently having something of a moment in the running community, as the acetic content prevents / ends cramps faster than water alone. The extreme taste actually aligns with the experience, tasting like a sort of corrective punishment upon unruly calves. Vegemite could lean into this, becoming the outback's version of a sustaining, life-giving goop.

We'd create its own mythology, paying respects to the ANZACs who received it in rations for its high nutritional content (a true story) and positioning Vegemite; not as a breakfast spread, but as a working class cure-all. Our very own Guinness.

Taking it to such an extreme, we could create Vegemite Menthols for Ultra-Marathon runners looking to maintain salt levels, we could sponsor any event taking place in extreme heat. We could stop pretending to be an island of happy, little Vegemites and finally show the world exactly who we are: salty, dark, and precisely not your cup of tea.

You're welcome, Australia.