- In today’s CEO Daily: Lessons from the Cracker Barrel crack up.
- The big story: South Korea’s president travels to D.C.
- The markets: Asia shoots upward after Powell signals openness to rate cuts.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Lila MacLellan here, filling in for Diane Brady. It’s a dilemma any CEO who has taken over a troubled-yet-beloved brand can relate to. How do you freshen things up without alienating loyal customers? We’re talking, of course, about the frenzy around Cracker Barrel, which has seen a brutal reaction to its modernization push and especially its new streamlined logo unveiled last week. Although the logo looked similar to the old one—brown and yellow with the same old-timey font—it didn’t include a literal barrel and the elderly character who had sat on a chair next to it for most of the company’s 56 years.
When I asked David Reibstein, a professor of marketing at The Wharton School, for his take on the fiasco, he gave the company and CEO Julie Felss Masino a mixed review. Brands have little choice but to make refreshments and face the ire of loyal customers who might feel unsettled by newness, so he applauds the CEO for insisting that Cracker Barrel evolve.
