How to Stand on Shaky Ground: Porter, Cracker Barrel and American Eagle

Branding — personal or corporate — all comes down to two things — knowing your audience and consistency. Recently we’ve seen evidence of two brands that messed it up and one that shows the way for others.

Let’s start with Katie Porter, a former California congresswoman and the frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee to be the state’s next governor. This week so far, three different videos have emerged showing the candidate behaving horribly towards staffers and a journalist. In one, she tells a staffer to “get out of my fucken shot” when doing a video interview and threatening to abruptly end a media interview because the reporter asked follow-up questions.

Who talks and acts this way, let alone with the camera rolling???? Can you imagine what happens when it isn’t? Good grief.

This abysmal behavior comes after positioning herself as the gritty, single mom of three who makes home-cooked meals and fights for kitchen-table issues. She became known in Congress for doing math on a dime-store whiteboard that held CEOs and others testifying accountable.

Listen, there’s a lot of bashing of women (especially in politics) and media generally these days, and this isn’t that. The idea a candidate for governor of the most populous state in America and the fourth-largest economy in the world can’t handle a few follow-up questions from a CBS reporter is breathtaking for all the wrong reasons. This penchant by far too many public and business officials to control not just the narrative but the medium (thus eliminating all potential oversight and accountability) is a death knell for a free and open society.

That she tells the interviewer, “I’m running for governor because I’m a leader” and doesn’t want to do a media interview that isn’t “pleasant” suggests she has few, if any, leadership skills. A key piece of being a leader is, in fact, getting comfortable with people questioning your decisions, your plans and your views.

As I’ve often told senior leaders I’ve coached, you can’t lead if you have no followers. To have followers, they need to trust you and to trust you they need to know you. Well, I would imagine California voters know more than they ever intended to about Porter now. And I predict this is just the beginning. In coming days and weeks, there will be more news stories about her boorish behavior that wasn’t caught on film.

There can be no daylight between the image you seek to project and the reality of your everyday reactions. The inconsistency always cripple you when they come out, and they almost always come out. She needs to step aside now in a race that could well determine the fate of the entire country and, as a result, the world. She is not equal to the task.

Cracker Barrel too missed the moment in multiple ways. The company’s growth has been stagnant for years so it’s not surprising the newish CEO Julie Felss Masino would launch a refresh of the company’s restaurants, which serve up a healthy dose of folksy with their perhaps less-healthy food options.

It all just seemed so preventable. Most of Cracker Barrel restaurants and sales come from deep red states in the US, where the company’s homespun, folksy style is deeply integrated into how customers see America and want America to look. I get the challenge: flat sales and the need to bring in new customers requires some evolution and refresh. That’s especially true when the majority of your customers are older than rival restaurants.

The old, and apparently new, logo.

Perhaps that’s the thing that’s been the most perplexing: They knew they were walking a tight rope on this rebrand. And yet, they went for it with a very modern logo and restaurant look seemingly without understanding the inconsistency with who they are and who their customers want them to be. And then, they backpedaled completely, giving up without trying to help external audiences understand.

Changing a beloved brand always needs to be done with care and full awareness and preparedness for any and all downsides. In this divisive, vitriolic political environment, this misstep was easily avoided by reading the room and taking a slower, more measured approach. Wow, the new merch in the lobby is fun, the biscuits are flakier…It’s brighter in here. Is that a new color on the walls? It’s not about the change, it’s about how they did it. They didn’t need to announce it at all. Just let it slowly take root before making news.

Staying the course can take enormous courage especially as social media lights up with negative comments. But if your choices reflect deep knowledge of your audience and are consistent with your brand, stay the course you must.

That’s what retailer American Eagle did when new ads with actress Sydney Sweeney enraged liberals as being racist or sexist. The company saw its sales go up, especially on clothing named after the actor.

One of American Eagle’s ads.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, CEO Jay Schottenstein discussed the controversy and why they stayed the course. “You can’t run from fear,” he said. “We stand behind what we did.”
Though 71 years old, Schottenstein deeply understands his client base — young adults — what they want to wear and what kind of message resonates with them. He wasn’t trying to entice middle-aged people commenting on TV or Threads to buy the company’s youth-targeted apparel, and he didn’t change a major ad campaign to appease them. And it’s paying off.

In a world of social media and non-stop marketing, understanding who you’re speaking to and being consistent with brand values across all channels in every encounter is critical. And given the choppy waters these days, more important than ever before making small shifts, let alone big ones.

If you’ve done the work, have a thoughtful, comprehensive strategy and understand the pitfalls, stay the course. Because no one knows your brand better than you. When companies like Anheuser-Busch, Target and Cracker Barrel tripped, they appeared to not have a strong belief in the plan or its execution. Instead testing the waters or appeasing factions in a way that may have done long-term harm to their brand and their business.