Baby Corn & Red Wine

Go to 1998 and think about two things - Baby Corn & Wine (any - white or read).
How many of us would have imagined that we would start buying baby corns every time we visited the vegetable wallah?
How many of us would have imagined conservative Marwari and North Indian families would begin putting this as a regular ingredient in their mixed vegetable preparation?
Leave aside baby corn. Think about wine. There is nothing in a bottle of wine that should qualify it as a great idea for a typical Indian drinker –
It does not taste great (pardon me wine aficionados)
It does not hit you like Old Monk & Bagpiper used to and still do
It is not cheap again like the Monk & the Piper

But still almost everyone is Wining & Dining Sula (or Château) & Baby Corn

Did they achieve this feat by using the most celebrated celebrity?
Did they achieve this after understanding how the consumer is so much wanting to have wine & baby corn but no one is giving it?
Did they achieve this by developing the most creative and strategically correct marketing communication campaign?

Perhaps none of the above three comes close to describing the mystery behind this mean feat.
All that baby corn and red wine did was to become content in place of communication. Wine became editorial, there were magazine recipes that made a hero out of the tiny baby corn, national and international chefs dished out the ‘corn & wine logic’, a couple of research reports in the newspapers about how wine was healthy and good for liver & brain & kidney & lungs – basically everything that we have inside us and yes the wine warriors threw parties for those who anyway liked wine and ensured that the rest of the world who had been sleeping when the former were sipping the wine got to see in ‘the news’ morning after.
There you are. Corn & Wine are the new age food & beverage cult.

It is very difficult to make people do something totally new; it is very easy to make people do something totally new.
We pick what we believe!