Cracker Barrel restaurants have been experiencing a massive customer hemorrhage, along with plummeting stock prices, thanks to self-inflicted wounds. Company leaders decided to replace the traditional, rustic, rather corny logo of an older fellow from the country leaning on a barrel.

Enter consulting firm Prophet, which produced a sleek, symmetrical and bloodless logo. The old guy was erased. Stores were also redesigned to remove the imitation country store atmosphere.

Corporate-style vision symbolized.

Disaster followed. Customers vanished. Stock prices nosedived.

Cracker Barrel has fired Prophet and is frantically trying to return to its established atmosphere and imagery.

Management guru Peter Drucker would be surprised by none of this, and a massive corporate misstep is a good tim

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