When an office renovation destroys a brand

This is the moment it ended, Forrest.



Cracker Barrel at least stopped at modern farmhouse airport brunch spot.

You tore down a southern mansion and replaced a dark wooded Victorian library with a Verizon store.

It was likely interpreted as a refresh, a way of connecting more to the modern player. You chose to appeal to kids who are seeing the exact same LED backlit crap at every school they visit instead of maintaining your southern charm.

The ethos of the program changed, and the ethos was your advantage.

This entire situation was bizarre, of course. You’d think there would have been a succession plan or some kind of transferable hand-off to maintain some of this lineage instead of what happened but that’s another story.

You had a brand image that was unique and impossible to replicate that you tossed out in a construction dumpster without any clue of what you were actually tearing out.

Some families carry on when a special patriarch dies, you could have capitalized on and continued regardless of losing Saban and you instead chose to became like everybody else.

The new guy deserved some changes to the office but the brand should have been managed better, it should have been understood better.