What the Cracker Barrel Rebrand Debacle Teaches Us

First things first, I just have to say...holy moly these rebrands lately are bringing out some serious debates and a hell of a lot of anger! Can we all take a deep breath in and out and calm down for just a quick sec?

Negative Rebrand Reactions Are Common

All joking aside, as a marketer who has launched many brands and rebrands in my career, I am not surprised by the hullabaloo around the Cracker Barrel rebrand – this is to be expected to some extent. There's almost always a big reaction and a slight dip in brand sentiment or market performance while the world adjusts to the brand. When you look at publicly traded companies, the stock price usually drops 3-8% initially after a rebrand before rebounding.

Why you ask? I've said it before and I'll say it again, your brand is so much more than just a logo and color palette. It is the overall experience that someone has when they experience your brand – the messaging, the product/service, the ambiance in your space, the customer service, the culture you create, etc. These visceral reactions you are seeing from loyalists to Cracker Barrel's rebrand – or to any brand really – reveals just how invested consumers get into brands. If you bring it down to basic human behavior, change is almost always seen as uncertainty, so is not usually received positively at first.

In fact, I don't know that I've ever done a rebrand for an organization where there isn't some pushback from someone at some point. One time I was part of a rebrand where some members of the organization were so pissed off at the logo and color palette that was chosen that they told us it was the dumbest thing they'd ever heard of.

Specifically, they couldn't believe we'd walk away from the company's 'iconic blue' and 'logo font' to become so modern and were convinced the clients would walk away simply because we abandoned the blue and stopped using Times New Roman for the logo font. Not kidding. They thought we were removing the serious nature of the company and replacing it with a clown car feel that would degrade clients' trust in the organization as a serious company.

Side note number 1, clients didn't walk away, they loved it and thought it made the organization look innovative and ready to move into the next stage of growth so actually had the opposite effect. Side note number 2, I think blue gets so completely overused, especially in healthcare and law firms, that it's the fastest way to the bottom and Times New Roman is not a font I would recommend for any logo, ever.

Was Cracker Barrel's Rebrand A Strategic Decision?

Back to this whole Cracker Barrel story...yes there was a lot of anger towards the organization for their new logo with political declarations and assumptions based on it. Let's table the politicization factor and just focus on the business decisions aspect. Circling back to my post on the Jaguar rebrand, I would pose the exact same business strategy questions here:

• How is the company performing? Cracker Barrel's profitability has dropped, their margins are razor thin, they have a high debt burden and poor liquidity. So yeah, I'd say they are struggling.

• Who are the target audiences and why aren't they buying? Cracker Barrel's audience is typically older couples (primarily Baby Boomers and Gen X), retirees, and road-trippers. They may still be buying but as Boomers age, have reduced income and start passing away, Cracker Barrel's key demographic is shrinking.

Based on these factors and what we know as outsiders who were not in the room, it makes sense that the organization needed a strategy to turn around its performance. The fact that their key demographics are a rapidly aging demographic alone, I think the decision to evolve their offering makes sense. When you evolve the offering, typically a rebrand makes sense.

So What Went Wrong?

From what I've seen, this isn't all that different than the refresh of other restaurant brands like Applebees and Chili's who have also evolved their brands, logos and offerings in recent years.

However, in my humble opinion, this wasn't and isn't about the logo itself (though I didn't love that either, but it's truly not the worst logo evolution I've ever seen). I think this is something that comes down to a pinch of losing touch slightly with key demographics and a lack of clearly connecting the rebrand to what the business strategy actually is for Cracker Barrel.

• Audience-wise, I don't think the CMO and her team didn't understand the audiences. If they didn't understand them then the menu items introduced in the past year or so wouldn't have been southern style or the large portions people expect. And they clearly understand that it's better to evolve the logo than to fully replace it or there would not have been elements of the prior logo included. Instead, I think they misunderstood the audiences' tolerance for change or evolution for such a traditionally held company. And definitely didn't anticipate just how visceral their response would be.

  
  

• Strategy connection-wise, I don't know that the way they explained the rebrand justification made it crystal clear why they did it - or in a way that makes sense to customers and not to investors. Yes they stated it was to "modernize the brand while maintaining its heritage." But to me that is something you say to investors (i.e, we know that we need to modernize to stay alive and keep our stock price up), not to customers.

  
  

  Had it been a customer first reasoning, i.e. our menu offerings are evolving, you as our customers are evolving so we think our brand needed to evolve to match, it might have been received differently. I think sometimes companies forget that customers are the ones purchasing the products which affects the company performance, not the shareholders. Audience-wise it should have been customer-first reasoning, not investor-first reasoning.

Conclusions

These rebrand conversations in the past year might lead many to think that rebranding is a horrible idea that should never be broached. That perception is dead wrong. In fact, brand is the most important element you have, particularly in uncertain times.

Instead, I would reframe and reinforce the argument that consumers get very attached to brands and the experience they have with those brands. As a result, rebranding should not be taken lightly or be done to lead the organization. As I tell my clients every day, the brand strategy should always be specifically and intentionally built upon and from the business strategy. If the business strategy, inclusive of audience shifts and product shifts, changes to a point where the brand needs to change with it, then the rebrand should be approached carefully and thoughtfully. But doing a rebrand to signal that you are going to shift your business strategy before you've shifted the strategy in a tangible way is a bit backwards.

Overall, I don't think the idea of rebranding Cracker Barrel was necessarily bad or the wrong approach. I just think the clear tie to the business strategy and clear communication to consumers behind the why is where this one fell down.

Thinking of rebranding but wary of where to start? Let's connect!