Seth Godin on leadership today:
Weak leaders (bosses, parents, captains and shift managers) resort to authority because they don’t trust themselves and their team enough to actually lead.
This is so incredibly true. And just because someone has lots of “experience,” it doesn’t mean they know how to lead.
Maybe longevity isn’t a liability. (If you know, you know.)
Me: I can’t believe no one is talking about Clemson losing to Syracuse.
Also Me: I forgot that I blocked “Clemson” and “Dabo” in my social media apps so I didn’t have to listen to people talk about Clemson.
We live in a world now where our media outlets are owned by a small number of conglomerates. And while this is possibly a more profitable set up for the corporations that own these outlets, it also makes it easy for them to be manipulated by billionaires and governments.
Our distribution channels are corrupted as well. Social media and newsletter platforms are controlled by a small number of players all motivated by advertising profits. We find sites through search engines that increasingly favor AI summaries over original content.
It shouldn’t be like this. No venture-capital-funded start up is going to provide a solution. No existing player is going to erode their own platforms. Instead, it’s going to be a grassroots effort to embrace the open standards we have (for example, RSS). We need to promote discussion by sharing stories that are meaningful and powerful. We need to support platforms and creators who are trying to address these issues without trying to build the next Google. We need to embrace technologies that make society better.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
F1 Qualifying is sometimes more exciting than a regular race. Today’s quali was incredible. Going to be tough to beat Max tomorrow.
Every year at the USC State of the University address, I get a selfie with Cocky.
It’s finally cool enough that I can drink my coffee on the back deck.
Home today for a warranty repair to our AC unit that developed a slow leak over the summer. Service is expected to take 3-5 hours. Goodness, they must be disassembling the whole thing.
I think I’ll likely stick with the base model iPhone 17 this year. It will be a massive upgrade from my iPhone 12 Pro. I’ll probably pick up a new Apple Watch, too, to replace my ancient Series 4, which I still wear every day.
Happy 18th birthday, Jilly!
Looking forward to the iPhone event tomorrow. I’m in the market for an upgrade… and whatever they announce will be a big step up from my iPhone 12 Pro.
The end of the Bills-Ravens game was wild. What a comeback.
Scout Motors partnered with local coffee shops to buy coffee for Columbia today. Pretty cool event, and we are happy to have Scout in our community. Thanks for the free drink today! (And the stickers.)
I bought a wireless CarPlay adapter for my car and it’s awesome. I can’t believe I didn’t buy one earlier.
My Ph.D. research is focused on consumer response to logos and visual identity, so as you can imagine, I’ve talked about Cracker Barrel1 a lot over the last few weeks. Everyone has an opinion and is eager to share it. I held off writing this because the social media chatter was just chaotic, but now that things have calmed down, I wanted to share some quick thoughts based on my research.
In my forthcoming study on logo attitudes with a sample of 1,000 American consumers2, over 60% of respondents agreed that if their favorite brand changed their logo, they’d want to know why. Cracker Barrel did a really poor job of explaining why they were changing their logo. It seemed to consumers like change for the sake of change and when challenged by consumers (plus a really strange political sideshow), they had no story to tell. And with no official rationale, people concocted their own narratives.
When I saw the news of the Cracker Barrel rebranding, I only saw a picture of the logo on a white background. When news outlets ran their stories, the only picture they used was of the front of a Cracker Barrel with the old logo. After Cracker Barrel had announced they were going back to the old mark, I saw examples of the new logo in action, and you know what, it looks nice. I can see what they were going for.
My study published in the Journal of Product & Brand Management found that viewers reacted more favorably when the logo was shown with additional context — examples of the new logo in use, behind-the-scenes sketches, and implementation details.
Cracker Barrel provided none of these images at launch. All consumers had to go on was the logo on a white square. And in general, people dislike new logos without context.
Everyone seemed to have a solution to Cracker Barrel’s problem. I lost track of how many hot takes I saw on social media. Young designers quickly providing their versions like it was a design school exercise. Branding consultants rushing to talk about how Cracker Barrel had abandoned their loyal fans. And most of these people weren’t fans of Cracker Barrel, they just wanted to capitalize on the attention.
This is the reality of design criticism these days. It comes from everywhere. I’ve been digging into the literature on deprofessionalization and the democratization of design for my dissertation and it’s clear that some of this criticism is rooted in a skeptical view of the design profession.
This level of criticism is going to accompany any major rebranding and companies like Cracker Barrel need to expect and prepare for the inevitable criticism.
Cracker Barrel seemed surprised and unprepared for obvious criticism. With no story and no context, they weren’t able to respond to critics effectively. This has nothing to do with whether the logo was “good” or “bad.” Instead, it shows how critically important the launch is for any rebranding. People will always have opinions. Logos are the tangible representation of a brand’s relationship with their consumers.
A good launch can go a long way to softening criticism, but a bad launch might completely sidetrack your branding strategy.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
Most of our neighbors have doorbell cameras and motion-activated cameras around their house. We don’t. This morning, one of our neighbors showed us a clip of a guy walking through our yard and trying our car door (which was locked). He then went to their house and tried to open their car doors. Now, I’m wondering if we should have security cameras, even though I think it’s a privacy nightmare…
I switched from the Tiny Theme to the Mythos Theme for my main blog. It’s really nice, but it’s going to take me a while to fully customize it.