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.
The most effective enterprise strategic plan flows from purpose, vision, and values. These guideposts provide context for long-term priorities; objectives and key results to be achieved through well-defined projects; and key performance indicators to measure how it is all going. And as the circulatory system for projects and teams, processes — their efficacy and unexploited potential — are critical to the success of the plan.
For decades marketers have found certain stages in a person’s life where they are more susceptible to messaging and marketing.
For some serious insight into the challenges facing grocery packaged goods, the Barron’s recent interview with Robert Moskow is an important read. One of the points made in the interview is that packaged goods’ focus on competing with own-label grocery brands seems to push a lot of buttons, except for innovation. Packaged goods seem to be fighting fights of the past rather than focusing on the future, in which packaged goods brands can win. Packaged...
Consumer anxiety has been building over the last two years, and it changes the face of optimal marketing and communications strategy. Rampant uncertainty is being nourished by upheaval over what the future looks like, impacting the chemistry of what people want (greater control) while the rules of culture-informed behavior and expectations around them relentlessly shift.
