In those times when maximum effort is not enough, and this happens to everyone and every enterprise, what heartens first is observing others — partners and competitors — who have endured the same condition and prevailed. In the cases where redemption eludes, the second point of heartening is the comfort found in venerating the one element that adheres to every vestige of an endeavor: values.
Not to beat this Cracker Barrel fiasco into the ground anymore, but there is a problem when brand marketers use age as a definer of relevant values. When Cracker Barrel and its crack consultants decided that modernizing the Cracker Barrel brand meant jettisoning the totems of Cracker Barrel’s provenance, those involved made a mistake. It is possible to be old and new at the same time.
In the early 2010s, entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield and his team of developers were building an online game called Glitch. Butterfield’s team eventually decided to shut Glitch down after it struggled to gain traction with users over years of effort.
