Brandjack News

If you believe the coverage in the general media then every rebranding ever has been a failure. That's because news stories require conflict and any rebranding that goes well is not a story: "company pays reasonable price for rather attractive new logo" is as newsworthy as "plane lands safely without incident". 

So the first lesson we can draw from this experience is that we should not even try to make a story out of a rebranding. The chances that the story will be reported positively, other than in specialist publications such as Ad Age and Marketing Week, are as close to zero as makes no difference. 

Successful rebrandings – such as the slow evolution of the Apple logo, or its staged shift from "Mac" to "i" – are not trumpeted. They are just implemented. 

Cracker Barrel probably thought it was doing something similar. First it began to shift the menu and then the decor in an effort to attract a younger demographic. Only when this was in place did it seek to modernize the logo. 

This brings us to the second lesson. People tend to have more loyalty to logos than marketers imagine. That's a bit odd, given that marketers devote a lot of effort to getting people to be loyal to brands. Why would they then be surprised if it works? It may be that people don't even realize how much affection they have for some element of the brand – the logo, or famously the taste of Coke – until it has gone. Then the nostalgia kicks in. 

Of course, people had not been showing much loyalty to Cracker Barrel. It had been losing market share. The problem is that by dumping the "heritage" logo the company was alienating the remaining customers. The ones who were loyal. 

Add to this the bizarre claim that the new logo was somehow "woke". The brand had certainly done other things which may have alienated some of its more conservative customers, such as supporting LGBTQ causes, as part of that effort to appeal to a younger market. And the old logo had an "old-timey" feel about it. It dates to the 1970s, but evokes a still earlier time. 

Older, nostalgia-driven, customers remained a part of the brand even as it introduced a successful app aimed at younger clientele. Changing the logo seems like rubbing the older customers' noses in the other changes. 

It is little wonder the company backed down in days after major stock market falls and criticism from one of the founders.