With everything going on this week (T-Swift’s engagement), it’s easy to have missed the big marketing news:

Cracker Barrel joined the club of brands who have rebranded and immediately regretted it.

Tuesday, Aug 19, Cracker Barrel announced their rebrand with a “simplified” version of their original logo. AKA they removed the “Old Timer” and the barrel from their logo mark.

One week (to the day) later, on Tuesday, Aug 26, the brand announced they were reverting to the previous logo mark.

There’s been plenty of conversation online about the rebrand. How:

• it was a mistake
• it was a publicity stunt
• it was a political play that backfired

Any of those might be true. What I haven’t seen people talking about is this:

There was a case for this rebrand.

Having been a part of several rebrands over my career, I can confirm that many of these decisions are made by a vast committee. Every comma, detail, and idea has been drafted dozens of times, reviewed, edited, re-presented, and often, changed at the 11th hour to appease one powerful stakeholder.

This rebrand was likely no different.

I believe the key disconnect that had the Cracker Barrel team and agency sprinting down the wrong path was that they were taking the wrong insights from the market research they performed:

The data might show:

• Young people don’t dine at the restaurants.
• Their key market is aging (and dying out).
• In a world of self-driving cars, AI, and influencers, their hokey brand feels irrelevant.
• The regional subculture they reflect is collapsing (Read about the loss of Southern accents).

On it’s own, that’s not a bad takeaway.

Especially if the business strategy is to gain new diners who have never been. Restaurant expansion relies on diners to break the habit of going to their usual spots and check out a new place for the first time (this is likely why they launched their new menu along with the logo changes).

What this strategy lacks is context as to WHY their loyal diners choose to eat there.

They forgot their market advantage.

Take me for example: I’m a proud 30-year-old Southerner. And I love Cracker Barrel.

It’s been the go-to spot for my family (especially my grandmother!) when we’re nostalgic for our kinda home cooking, but we don’t wanna spend 5 hours making the collards just right.

(Cracker Barrel collards aren’t MY collards by any stretch. But they’ll satisfy a craving.)

Their market advantage was that they are one of the few chains that have a “synthetic nostalgia” feel (phrase borrowed from Colin Rocker, @careercolin).

While the nostalgia of the early 2000s is more what Gen Z is into right now, nostalgia marketing is a trend big brands are trying to manufacture because it works. Having some nostalgia authentically a part of your brand? That's a key marketing benefit right now.

Lest we forget that Cracker Barrel is an old brand, run by older people.

I think they’re just catching up to the “modernist” trend that started in the 2000s with Walmart's biggest logo shift in 2008.

Hence why Cracker Barrel leaned into the “simplified” style.

The audience read it as dated (it is), soul-less (it is), and removing the things that make Cracker Barrel lovable (the nostalgia).

But they didn’t get it all wrong.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT

Take the Triangle Peg Game.

It’s been a little knickknack on the tables that customers play with while waiting for food. This gamification and distraction is incredibly smart, especially if your kitchen is behind.

It’s a shared memory for many, but it had no place in the brand… until now.

This was the FIRST thing I noticed about the rebrand when I sat down at our table Sunday night.

(My grandmother was itchin' to see what changed at her favorite location.)

The silverware packet had a QR code with the recognizable peg. I scanned it. They use the peg as not only a exclamation mark, but also to signify their sign of loyalty. A nod in a “those who get it, get it” approach.

There will be endless critique and push back on what the brand got wrong (someone get Crisis Comms in here!). But I’m hoping they don’t walk the rebrand so far back that they remove the things they absolutely got right.

Other anecdotes I’ve gathered while researching this over the week:

• ​The agency was paid $700M for this work. 🤡
• Other brands who had horrible responses to their new brands include The Gap, Starbucks, Arby’s, and New Coke.
• The CEO, Julie Felss Masino, is getting a lot of flack, but does have a history in brand and companies much larger than Cracker Barrel: Starbucks, Mattel, Taco Bell, etc.

In summary, everything going on with Cracker Barrel feels BIG right now (and Taylor Swift did them a favor by getting engaged and taking the heat off the brand), but it will, as it always does, blow over.

But let's take from lessons from it in the meantime.

Have a great long weekend, ✌️

Note: This week's edition I stray from my new format since this Marketing News is just too good to pass-up. No tips, no frameworks, just a pure pov as a Southerner, as a marketer, and as a regular Cracker Barrel diner. (I also didn't get into the political or racial aspects of the conversation because that's a different story altogether!)