The majority still demand differentiation, genuine authenticity, and to hear another voice.
We must encourage those who wish to march to a different drummer.
How does this jive with the resistance to change shown by Cracker Barrel customers? Perfectly, because I think they, along with the Jaguar drivers, are really protesting the loss of differentiation rather than a resistance to change. We must encourage those who wish to march to a different drummer.
unafraid to put it all on the line to encourage, primarily the young students on campus, to embrace and engage in debate with others of different views. That he was rarely matched and beaten with his challenge of the ‘Prove Me Wrong’ campaign only serves to highlight how special he was at just thirty-one years old, irrespective of whether you agreed with him or not.
Closer to home, Mike's Kitchen always comes to mind when I think of this topic. From sixty-seven restaurants in the mid- eighties, they dropped the family-dining- red-checked-tablecloths image down to just four before the recent ongoing recovery to seventeen. Not all rebrands, though, have been train wrecks. Check out the likes of Apple from its early days; Burberry, whose rebrand lifted sales by 21%; Starbucks; and my personal favourite, Lego, which has outpaced the rest of the toy competitors in a strong recovery market. The brand and marketing experts have dissected these successes and failures in great detail, which makes it all the more surprising that Cracker Barrel and Jaguar made such stinkers!
Charlie Kirk: a different drummer My key takeaway is more of a market statement. In a world of unparalleled sameness, where differentiation seems to be discouraged by the most vocal, where other views, opinions and ideas are the new blasphemy, I find hope in the reaction, which both of these brands unwittingly prompted. The majority still demand differentiation, genuine authenticity, and to hear another voice. But with immense sadness, as I write this article, I am wrestling with the appalling news of the assassination of Charlie Kirk . To me, he was a super-smart achiever,
Charlie Kirk. Photo credit: Andre Chung
October 2025 | Issue 141 | Asset Magazine 289
288 Asset Magazine | Issue 141 | October 2025
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