Matt Walsh is right - marketing is a 500 billy doll-hair scam (just ask Cracker Barrel)

Another woke feminist girl boss marketing type does her best Indian scam call impression… 

Welp, Cracker Barrel recently pulled a Bud Light and it’s caused quite the tizzy online. 

They hired 3 different marketing agencies to design a new logo to, checks corporate speak notebook, “Cracker Barrel can feel like the Cracker Barrel for today and for tomorrow.” 

Whatever that means. 

If’n you’ve seen any recently redesigned logo, the new Cracker Barrel logo follows suit by stripping away any traces of personality and uniqueness. It’s almost as if I’ve somehow been transported into a weird parallel universe where the first rule of marketing isn’t to stand out, but to blend in. 

Seriously. 

I feel like I woke up in that one Timmy Turner episode where Timmy wishes everyone in the world was the same… and every person is turned into a grey blob, stripped of everything that makes them unique or human. 

Here was their logo redesign:

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

(Yes, this is happening not just to corporate logos, but to humans too who now use AI to literally think for them.)  

But, thankfully, Cracker Barrel didn’t just strip any sense of personality or uniqueness from their logo. That would simply be too easy. Heck, that would only require one marketing agency, not three!

So they didn’t stop there… 

They’ve also completely gutted the inside of their store in a disastrous remodeling attempt that turned their once warm and welcoming southern interior into a millennial’s low culture wet dream of vague and bland nothingness. 

And despite the criticisms happening online, the new girl boss CEO of Cracker Barrel is pretending to exist in a world where the onslaught of criticism is actually praise. I’m serious. Unfortunately. 

From an article in The Tennessean:

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Despite recent online pushback against the renovations, Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino said in an Aug. 19 interview on "Good Morning America" that "people like what we're doing," USA TODAY reported.

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LOL - nothing like a little delusion of grandeur that denies reality from a CEO nonetheless. 

Welcome to the world we live in where nothing has personality and nothing stands out. 

Anyway, I just realized I haven’t even paid off the subject line yet!

Matt Walsh said it best:

“Three agencies collaborated for months to make their brand more generic. Like I said, the marketing industry is completely fake. It’s a 500 billion dollar scam.”

It’s hard to disagree with the stoic truthsayer. 

Even as someone who is in the marketing industry. Especially as someone who is in the marketing industry. 

I’ve had my fair share of god-awful experiences with so-called marketing agencies who:

* Create brand awareness “ads” that can’t be measured, and thus, the agencies behind them cannot be held accountable 

* Chase after Facebook likes as if you could pay your mortgage by showing the bank teller how many likes your post got 

* Act like the expert when it comes to things like email marketing even though the extent of their knowledge is a) emails gotta have a subject line b) heavily-designed templates are pretty and c) oh and every email should have a PS 

* Live by the lines of overpromise and underdeliver because, well, they’re sociopaths who are more interested in making their wallet fatter than delivering on any promise they offer 

I could go on and on. I didn’t even mention the soulless Cracker Barrel redesign, the inflammatory Bud Light schtick a couple of years back, the Pepsi one, the Jaguar one, on and on and on and on. 

Moral of this fractured story?

I wouldn’t trust any so-called marketing agency to make me a cup of coffee out of my Keurig, let alone come anywhere near my business. 

But there’s good news too: 

While Rome collapses in real-time (and in the least fun or interesting way ever ala boring, repetitive logos, buildings, and the complete vacuuming away of culture), the fundamentals of direct response marketing have never given you a bigger competitive edge. 

Same with infotainment. 

Same with knowing why your customers buy and not hating them. 

(Can’t say the same about any of these so-called marketing agencies behind Cracker Barrell, Bud Light, Pepsi, Jaguar, yada yada yada.) 

In fact, you have an unfair competitive advantage simply by NOT hating your customers. 

Now imagine you take that gratefulness for your customers and mix it with direct response principles and infotaining emails. 

I can’t think of a better way to “enjoy” the collapse coming. 

And you know what? 

You’re one reply away from creating this reality while we watch the one surrounding us go down in a blaze. 

So, hit reply cully, and let’s find a time to chat. 

John

PS - Cracker Barrel actually changed their logo back to their old one since I wrote this. So apparently, the backlash got so bad that their girl boss CEO could no longer create delusions around it. 

Still, my point stands: Most marketing agencies only exist to create problems to justify their existence. 

That, more than my plain-text, storytelling, copy-first approach to email marketing, is the main difference between working with an agency or a freelancer. Among other benefits. 

Anyway, I’ve also cooked up a way to profit from Cracker Barrel’s new old logo, more on that in a couple of days. 

Matt Walsh, Cracker Barrel. Forever.

JBC