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The Cracker Barrel brouhaha has ended the only way it possibly could… with Donald Trump involved. Once the president of the United States says your new logo is stupid, it’s time to bend the knee while waving the white flag of surrender. The restaurant did. Uncle Hershal is back. Now the truth is being told about the decision-making process. Spoiler: The people responsible were told fans would hate it, but they didn’t care.
To recap Tuesday, in the morning, Donald Trump was all like:
Then in the afternoon, Cracker Barrel was all like:
Here’s where the story takes a hilarious turn. When CEO Julie Felss Masino announced her strategic plan to transform the brand, an investor spoke up and warned her that everything she wanted to do was stupid and would be rejected by people who actually like Cracker Barrel, as opposed to the people Masino was attempting to impress.
Over the next months, Masino and her board of directors dismissed at least four warnings by a top investor, Sardar Biglari, that the rebranding was “obvious folly,” filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal.
“Cracker Barrel is not a broken brand but it has a broken board,” he wrote, in a scathing seven-page letter to shareholders.
He laid out his criticisms in a 120-page slide-deck presentation with the title, “CRACKER BARREL IS IN CRISIS,” next to the company’s longtime logo of an old man in overalls leaning on a barrel – a logo that Masino would wipe out, unbeknownst to Biglari at the time.
Nevertheless, she persisted with her leading brand agency that had a plan to:
“Refine and strengthen positioning to delight existing and new guests.”
This is them doing that.
“Enhance the menu.”
It didn’t get that far.
“Evolving the store and guest experience.”
Guests said they hated it.
“Win in digital and off-premise.”
This is them doing that.
And “elevate the employee experience,” which I don’t even know what that means.
I know the word “woke” gets thrown around because it is only four letters, and you have a limited character count on X-Twitter. But again, this is less about woke than it was about elitism, not that the decision makers don’t also engage in the lazy virture signalling that makes woke woke.
But we’ve seen this over and over.
- Take a brand beloved by America.
- Say it needs to be changed in order to justify your job.
- Hire marketing firms from New York City run and staffed by people who hate the parts of America outside of New York City and don’t understand why the parts outside of New York City hate them.
- Ruin everything customers like about your brand to appeal to Park Slope and the Upper West Side, who will never use your brand.
- Be surprised that there is backlash to marketing changes that the people who enjoy the product never wanted, aimed at appealing to those who don’t and never will.
Unlike every other time, the President of the United States got involved. Had he not, it would have been full speed ahead until the company was run into the ground.
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Brodigan is Grand Poobah of this here website and when he isn’t writing words about things enjoys day drinking, pro-wrestling, and country music. You can find him on the Twitter too.
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Author: Brodigan
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