Thank you for reading and supporting Novella. This is part 9 of the serialized novella “What Brings You Back Home. Go here to start at the beginning, or pick up where you left off: Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4/ Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 /Part 8
Creamed corn. That’s how Nora Flanagan made her mark and her fortune: as the CEO of a canned food company best known for its creamed corn. Flanagan Farms sells all of the usual pantry items: green beans, sliced mushrooms, cling peaches, tomato soup, artichokes, you name it, but the creamed corn was their flagship product, the one that took Nora from just the CEO of a canned food company to the CEO of the most successful canned food company in the world. The rebranding of creamed corn was Nora Flanagan’s Big Idea.
An old article in Business Week reveals how Flanagan took a cheap product no one cared about and gave it panache by entering into a licensing deal with a renowned French chef. This was in 1999, before such partnerships became commonplace. The marketing department slapped the French chef’s face on the label and renamed the corn—same provenance, slightly different seasoning—Corn de la Creme.