Go to 1998 and think about two things - Baby Corn & Wine (any - white or red).
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!
4 comments:
Lol, this reminds me of the recent round that Risotto did at Blore few months back. Every new age woman in town made the best Risotto and had them, talked about them, slept with them as if it was Gawds gift to mankind. Ofcourse with red wine you fool ;-)
Hate baby corn and wine.
Can't say this about babycorn, but the supposed reputation of wine and wine-drinkers as sophisticated (cultivated over centures) also helped termendously.
another point against wine is: it doesnt go well with indian food
and yes, iqbal...even i think the aspirational imagery associated with wine worked for it.
Bit of a tangent here, but I did some serious wine research recently - there do seem to be some new age wines that work well with some indian food - well I can safely say north indian food at least.
Can dig out Vir Sanghvi's article on the subject as well if anyone's interested in a read (brunch, circa dec 06)
One of the wine issues in India is that wine isn't stored properly most places - it's distribution and storage that screws up the taste.
Plus
1. consumers dont know which wine to pick
2. not all places that serve wine have staff trained to pick out the right one
3. pseudo sophisticat being a driver, ppl will pick based on long name/ french/ italian/ price rather than taste or qualities
It seems that the new trend is to break the established wine rules. I had some lovely chilled merlot recently. White wine with lamb even. Red with grilled chicken.
*glug glug glug, show me the bubbly now*
Post a Comment