Cracker Barrel Forgot the Brand before the Rebrand
Note to readers: hours after this post was published, Cracker Barrel issued another public announcement retreating from its flop of a rebrand. This is covered at the end of this article. This appears to be a dynamic situation at corporate hq, so if newsworthy developments occur in this drama, I will either add it to this article, or publish a new column in the near future. Thanks for reading! - Gene
The ongoing Cracker Barrel drama in the aftermath of a failed rebranding effort is the latest high-profile, disastrous, and completely avoidable debacle for a growing list of recent corporate campaigns that resulted in serious damage to the brand it was intended to elevate.
There were so many missteps and individual factors that were at play in the decision making and execution of this harmful marketing move but a few stand out above the rubble. This includes a corporate hierarchy, existing in an echo chamber and out-of-touch with its market fundamentals, permitting its brand voice and identity to be taken over by factors not in the best interest of the organization.
It is not an exaggeration to view Cracker Barrel leadership as yet another suite of executives, unfamiliar with its own legacy, brand identity, and market space or not caring about it.
This situation also has the calling cards of a dysfunctional corporate structure and processes that include an environment where the CEO seemed more intent on making changes for ego that agreed with her personal style or viewpoint than what benefited the brand and its stakeholders.
Also, apparently missing was a culture of constructive push back, debate, discussion and outright opposition that generates the best leadership, results, and strategies (including effective pivots when campaign execution fails.)
The best sales and/or marketing campaigns I have been fortunate to contribute to and participate in were those where the CEO and executive leadership had a starting point of being true to the brand and all its aspects. Productive debate and dissension were permitted and encouraged and importantly, external forces, notably outside consultants, ad agencies, pr firms and others did not have a disproportionate influence.
Even when the decision has been made by consensus internally or just the CEO that a rebrand is needed and new sales or marketing to support it, the starting point should always instinctively default to basic but critical questions that pointedly consider the health of the brand, the business it represents and all the components that comprise a healthy, growing, and focused organization.
I have seen often enough over the years where leadership decides to bring in external assistance for rebranding or for reboots of marketing and sales strategies and the project detours and degrades into something completely different.
All too often, in projects such as this, the brand and its supporting pillars including voice, identity, and messaging, are hijacked as the work becomes political, ideological or a hybrid of something removed from the intended focus of boosting the brand and its health.
Assistance is one thing. Influence is different. I have witnessed external consultants take on roles that morphed from providing sound, thoughtful, researched and professional guidance to becoming an isolated and powerful water carrier of what the CEO or executive leadership wants to do without any regard to internal audience input or customer preferences.
I have seen rebranding projects devolve into silly and unproductive power struggles among departments where a perceived opportunity for greater status, dominance, and budget clouds decision making in the crafting of a new chapter for the brand.
There have also been projects the veered off course as it became all about the consulting firm and its desire to use the opportunity to showcase itself and generate more business.
Many factors come into play when a rebranding goes wrong but typically it is the allowance of forgetting it is all about the brand. Not in the short term. But in the long term. It is about what the brand represents, its legacy, its base, messaging, and how to GROW without losing what took so much hard work and years to build.
In an American market saturated with choice, endless marketing, round-the-clock connectivity, and growing dissatisfaction with lack of quality, customer care, and pricing, the last thing an established brand (even one with struggling or restless to grow more) does today is insult your base and throw away brand equity (even if leadership feels the brand needs a makeover.)
If you do, the result is Cracker Barrel.
The execution of this rebrand not only cost an exorbitant amount of money to create and rollout but now, as the flaming embers of one of the most rapidly unsuccessful campaigns smolder for business history books to detail, news comes out that the company has hired a high-profile public relations and communications firm to clean up the mess as data reveals the chain suffered an immediate and precipitous downfall in sales.
I recall reading more than a year ago numerous reports about Cracker Barrel experiencing serious challenges as traffic and sales were declining amid a corporate perception that its outlets had become outdated, the menu stale, and its customers old.
Coming into this situation was a change in leadership and apparently a belief that a deep rebrand was needed fast.
An early sign, that this effort was directed wrongly and filled with more with emotion, ego, and anxiety than clarity and strategy was when Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino, nine months into her new gig, whined freely during an investor call (which included attending business media) that she believed the chain was passé.
“We’re just not as relevant as we once were,” Felss Masino bemoaned. “Some of our recipes and processes haven’t evolved in decades.” She added, Cracker Barrel had fallen to “the middle of the pack” and “lost some market share, especially at dinner.”
The chain’s stock promptly fell more than 20% in the days after the call and hit a 52-week low that spooked and angered investors who abandoned the ship.
Truist analyst Jake Bartlett told The New York Post, “(Cracker Barrel) announced a plan for a plan but they didn’t give investors enough information to judge whether reinvesting in the stores was a credible plan to address the traffic losses.”
Although an analyst, Bartlett seemingly had more common sense, more business and marketing acumen than the CEO, when he acknowledged the chain needed to work on attracting younger customers but with thoughtful strategy by sharing “they have a lot of senior consumers, so long term they need to migrate away from that consumer.”
Long term.
As I wrote earlier, the goal for Cracker Barrel’s situation should have been how GROW over the long term without losing what took so much hard work and years to build.
Despite the stock tanking and analysts providing Business 101 feedback after the investor call, no lessons were learned. Leadership was locked in to what feels like a predetermined, carved-in-stone plan without any room for retreat, reset or rethink. Felss Masino also was either intentionally ignorant of the customer base that had put lots of money into her and other executive’s pockets, or did not care when she emphasized a fleeting social media moment the chain was having when a TikTok influencer praised the apparel she found in the restaurant’s adjoining ‘country store.’
“Go ahead and Google Cracker Barrel versus Anthropologie,” Felss Masino told analysts on the infamous investor call. “It’s a thing and if you know, you know.”
In hindsight, these comments and the early phase execution of the reboot by sharing some moves such as removing 20 items off the menu, changing the lighting, seating, and décor as well as mandating labor cost cutting, including the kitchen staff, were enough to produce some trepidation. But the reactions the market gave to leadership were fast, in real time, and disturbing.
But this ship kept steering into the iceberg ahead.
While it is clear that the CEO and other executive leadership at Cracker Barrel went all in with blinders on and no willingness or ability to pivot, pause and re-calibrate the strategy, or at least its style and demeanor in execution, the overriding issue was the brand, despite what corporate might say, had been lost in the noise of the project.
A brand should be seen as a living entity in the sense it has a voice, a character, relationships, perceived, if not confirmed, values and meaning to its audience. A brand with decades of legacy behind it, especially one that was not prone to abrupt changes, clinging to passing fads, or eager to chase new friends by ditching and dismissing the old ones, needs to change slowly, with thought, purpose and clarity.
A modernized, evolved, or expanded brand, use whatever adjective you wish, needs to build on the foundation it was constructed, not constructed by destruction.
Regardless if an organization is hellbent on pushing out a striking reboot or tweaking its identity and messaging along with the supporting measures to boost it, there are several points that need to be considered:
· Leadership, whether that is the CEO alone, with the CMO or executive officers in key positions should embrace an open-dialogue culture with productive and constructive discussion that challenges the attributes of the strategy.
· Seriously take inventory of the current situation that is presenting the challenge. Objectively and without emotion or influencers pushing change, determine if things are indeed as bad as perceived. Dive into all the possibilities of why the business is not performing up to expectations. Ask internal audiences. The rank-and-file are among the most valuable resources an organization has to tap for truth. They live it in the trenches.
· Execute a meaningful and blunt but comprehensive SWOT analysis that goes beyond traditional boundaries. Explore the status of all the components of the brand and the business including public relations, marketing, sales (and the messaging, style, and execution of all three), the optics, legitimate or not, for the business and brand as well as its leadership and public representatives.
· How is the brand’s media relations and relationships with all stakeholders including shareholders, analysts, business partners, relevant elected officials and departments, community affairs, and other audience segments?
· WHO is the loyal customer base and why? WHO is the new target customer and why? What is the current messaging for the brand? What is considered to be needed new or additional messaging?
· Critical Point: INCLUSION DOES NOT MEAN EXCLUSION. All too often, organizations feel they have to choose old and new in a pivot instead of taking the time with a strategy that expands…slowly, thoughtfully, and with precise focus and execution that does not insult, alienate or toss the base that helped build your success with their patronage.
· Craft a surround strategy that supports the execution and explanation of the campaign to all internal and external audiences with a consistent voice, style, and material. Treat all groups equally with the same consistent messages, talking points, and material crafted for each group.
· Do not lie. Do not use corporate talk. Do not use legalese. Do not use language and idioms that are staples exclusively to the organization. Communicate clearly and precisely. Leave the corporate ego aside. Provide explanations. Encourage feedback.
· Do not ignore, but acknowledge if there is resistance or anxiety over the change. If fallout begins or the campaign is meeting negative responses, acknowledge, be real, and reinforce the explanations and thinking behind the strategy.
· Do not let marketing or sales be the end-all, exclusive, or overly dominant influences. A brand is healthy when all aspects of the organization behind it is productively active and invested in the brand and its execution.
Some readers may note I have not included much about public relations in this process. For dramatic effect, I have saved it for last to mention that the pr office of the organization should be integrated into the strategy from the moment it is decided to go forward with it.
Good or bad, it will be the pr apparatus of the company that will be on the front lines of broad public response as well as that from the media and relevant external groups (or it should be because if marketing or sales is doing public relations, the setup for failure is already present.)
Whether corporate communications is a firm’s public relations or vice versa, or they are separate offices, both need to be at the onset of a rebrand.
Marketing and sales are often thought as the leaders in this type of effort, but as I have written previously, there needs to be a recognition of the distinct skills, tools, strategies and styles professionally that differentiate them and they need to be allowed to integrate, collaborate and work in consistency but also distinctly.
In the weeks to come, I am sure more will come out on how this Cracker Barrel process was allowed to go public and the fallout from it will be a useful exercise in reminding us what not to do.
ADDENDUM - Cracker Barrel’s CEO Felss Masino has apparently learned nothing from the past few weeks as the brand and the business has taken a serious hit with its customers and has immediately suffered financially. The chain has now willingly committed yet another misstep and ignored the best rules of engagement by responding to and attacking a competitor.
Although the head of Steak N’ Shake Sardar Biglari has aggressively criticized Cracker Barrel’s failed rebrand and its CEO on social media and has called for her departure (he has an obvious conflict as not only a competitor but Cracker Barrel’s top investor), Felss Masino bit the bait and allowed her damaged brand to take on the criticism poorly.
First, Cracker Barrel issues a press release that the overwhelming majority of the public will not read, care about or decide to suddenly support because of it. I am not implying Cracker Barrel should have stayed completely silent but the legalese it included along with its own analysis of Biglari’s leadership at Steak N’ Shake was not necessary. It was too defensive. The new crowd Cracker Barrel is attempting to attract, does not care and did not suddenly show up at locations the past month. The old customer base is angry, insulted, and looking to make that point.
Simply state who Biglari is, why there is conflict and hypocrisy if you feel you must, restate the value you have for your existing customers, acknowledge their concerns and frustrations and let the public relations professionals communicate brand building talking points and messaging.
Macy’s CEO Tony Spring recently told the media after a better-than-expected quarterly report that he reads every customer communication that comes in, good or bad, and acknowledged the chain’s customers and their importance to decision making.
Cracker Barrel did this, only after the logo debacle began, stocks fell, sales spiraled, and only after another poor decision in doubling-down publicly on the new logo that excluded the ‘old-timer’ from its graphics by seeming to downplay or diminish customers’ emotions towards the move.
On September 9, The New York Post published another article on the Cracker Barrel fiasco that can further damage its relationship with customers, deepen the devaluing of the brand, and place leadership into even worse light when it reported mandated cost-cutting resulted in the chain serving day old biscuits, reheating food made in advance and placed on tables menu items that clearly were stale.
“… biscuits that arrived at tables “hard,” “rubbery” and “like a rock” — were the result of a nonpublic February directive that prioritized “cost savings” and “efficiency” over customer satisfaction, multiple employees told The Post.”
Ouch. Cost savings and efficiency over quality and customer satisfaction.
Now, we are delving into fundamental areas of a brand’s value proposition being damaged that is harder to correct than ideology and emotion, especially in food – quality of product.
Cracker Barrel, if it were smart, would take this opportunity to collectively own the mistakes of the past year, including this latest report, affirm these errors (and they are errors) are not what the chain wants or intended, acknowledge the value of customer feedback and patronage, and confidently state it will reset and move forward with an emphasis on quality, value, and tradition -while inviting new customers to discover them too.
Or, continue to head to that iceberg in what is left of the ship.
{ Hours after this post was published, Cracker Barrel issued yet another public statement retreating from its terribly executed rebranding effort. The chain stated: “You’ve shared your voices in recent weeks not just on our logo, but also on our restaurants. We’re continuing to listen. Today, we’re suspending our remodels. If your restaurant hasn’t been remodeled, you don’t need to worry, it won’t be. With our recent announcement that our “Old Timer” logo will remain, along with our bigger focus in the kitchen and on your plate, we hope today’s step reinforces that we hear you.”
The chain further commented on the decision to ditch the interior remodeling plan as part of the rebrand by saying, “The vintage Americana you love will always be here – the rocking chairs on the porch, our fireplaces and peg games, unique treasures in our gift shop and antiques pulled straight from our warehouse in Lebanon, Tennessee.”
An additional nod to the customer base was included in the press release: “We said we would listen, and we have.”
As of udating this post, the chain has not publicly responded to a report in the New York Post that said leadership mandated cost-cutting in its kitchens by eliminating cooks and requiting outlets to cook food a day or more ahead of time and simply reheating it in a microwave and serving stale food such as old biscuits.
Clearly, some of the points I have shared in this column have made their way into the corporate consciousness whehter by guidance from the pr firm it hired for crisis communications and image healing or by force as they view the dropping revenue. Regardless, it is the right steps to not only heal with relationships with a loyal fan base but strenghten it. }
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