Politically Unstable: When companies go woke, they go broke

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Friday, August 29, 2025

The Cracker Barrel logo debacle was just the latest example of companies making marketing moves that are the antithesis of what their customer base wants. And they paid the price for this mistake.

Market and business analyst Seth Denson joins Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler on Politically Unstable to discuss why companies need to stay out of politics and the consequences of not understanding their consumer base.

[SADLER] Most recently, it was Cracker Barrel, who modernized their logo to refresh the brand. And then it sparked a lot of backlash, both from the online community and from the President of the United States, who weighed in, saying that they should not take the old man and the barrel off their logo. And the company, after going back and forth and defending its decisions and blaming its customers, agreed that they’re not going to change their logo after all. Seth, what do you make of all of this drama?

[DENSON] It really goes back to the heart. I’d love to make it really complex, specific to Cracker Barrel, I think it’s quite simple. They didn’t know their customer. And it’s a challenge that we see playing out oftentimes. Obviously, we have the Bud Light example. You see Disney in the limelight a lot these days. But effectively, what Cracker Barrel did was they likely hired a marketing firm that didn’t know what their customers expected. The reality is, for a company like Cracker Barrel, it’s deeply a southern company. My parents love it. I’m from the South, born and raised. I still live in the South today. My parents, if you ask where you want to go to dinner, they’re a lot of times going to say Cracker Barrel. It’s not because of the food. I think that the solution for Cracker Barrel largely could be in the fact that they should improve their food, not change their logo. But the reality is it transports you back in time to grandma’s house and the front porch and the farm table and all of that.

This is an essential component in business that you’ve got to understand who your customers are. And if you’re trying to gain new market share, you’ve got to do that without alienating what market share you currently have. I think Cracker Barrel could recover from this, to your point, they changed very quickly. The great thing about people in the South, and I think people generally across the United States, is they’re very forgiving, if you’re willing to eat a little bit of humble pie. And maybe, I don’t know, Cracker Barrel, that could be something you launch, we’re gonna serve grandma’s humble pie. And that just might win some hearts and minds back.

[SADLER] You wrote a column for us on this, and part of your column explains that Cracker Barrel was losing market share. It was underperforming. It is a business after all, and it’s a multi-million dollar business. I mean, after they launched this marketing campaign or this rebrand, they lost over a hundred million dollars in the market from the value of their stock because of the backlash in trading. After they said that they are going to go back to the original logo, they’re up in the markets right now. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t need to do something to help their business model. I think the CEO was concentrated on that.

They did a woke marketing campaign up in New York City with influencers, with their food. But it’s getting away from what you said is the core of their business and their customers and the nostalgia and being from the South. But I mean, what should they do? All of this backlash is a multi-billion-dollar campaign for them. Cracker Barrel, we’re now talking about it. We weren’t talking about it last week or last month, but what do they need to do to position themselves better and to make money?

[DENSON] Yeah, it’s a great point. And it’s certainly something they should have been asking in the boardrooms, which, you know, what they probably should have done is gone and hired a marketing firm and asked: How do we refresh the brand?