{"id":170705,"date":"2025-08-24T03:10:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/170705\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T03:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T03:10:09","slug":"cracker-barrels-marketing-fiasco-shows-investors-are-making-woke-a-massive-risk-factor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/170705\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracker Barrel’s marketing fiasco shows investors are making woke a massive risk factor"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the Cracker Barrel market puke<\/a> has anything to teach Wall Street, it\u2019s that investors who are deciding where to put their money must add corporate \u201cwokeness\u201d to their menu of risks to \u00addigest.<\/p>\n

In fact, making \u201cwoke\u201d an investing risk factor \u2014 in some cases as important as the direction of interest rates and inflation \u2014 seems so obvious that I hesitated to write this column. Recall Bud Light\u2019s \u00adDylan Mulvaney fiasco, or Target CEO Brian Cornell\u2019s recent exit following his ill-fated\u00a0\u00adobsession with DEI.<\/p>\n

Wokeness is generally defined as subjecting the culture and business to left-wing dogma involving race, sex and viewing all things Americana as anathema. It simply doesn\u2019t sell to mass audiences.<\/p>\n

And yet companies keep going there. Corporate managers, it turns out, are a politically and socially tone-deaf bunch. They are lousy at reading the current mood of the country and its hatred of progressive indoctrination \u2014 whether in the classroom or when they simply want to enjoy a beer. Their advisers may be even worse.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why shareholders must demand \u2014 whether it\u2019s at annual meetings, on earnings calls or with testy phone calls to Investor Relations \u2014 that the C-suite extricate wokeness from corporate decision-making.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s not mainstream,\u00a0there are some savvy Wall Street types adding \u201cwoke risk\u201d to their models, just not using that exact terminology. Bob Sloan, founder of the data analytics firm S3 Partners (and my co-host on the \u201cRisk and Return\u201d podcast), is among them. For weeks he has been watching Cracker Barrel\u2019s stock for an unconventional catalyst that could send it higher or lower.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Gasparino<\/p>\n

The data he came across suggested the stock was ripe for something big even if big isn\u2019t something you might associate with Cracker Barrel<\/a>. It\u2019s a relatively sleepy restaurant chain that has been around for decades.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It features country-style food at highway rest stops mainly in middle America. It\u2019s known for its yellow signage and its image of\u00a0\u201cUncle Herschel,\u201d an old white guy clad in overalls and seated next to the eponymous barrel.<\/p>\n

It has a smallish market cap; around $1.2 billion. It\u2019s profitable though it faces some headwinds like all mature businesses.<\/p>\n

What caught Sloan\u2019s eye a few weeks ago is what S3 specializes in: Looking at investor sentiment around a stock. That is, the degree to which investors believed in the stock and were \u201cactive\u201d longs (they might buy more under the right conditions), and those who were bearish, so-called active shorts betting against it and willing to double down on their bets.<\/p>\n

Sloan noticed the active long and short sentiment was pretty evenly split. \u201cThat means all it takes is some event to move shares significantly in either direction,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n

Cracker Barrel shares, trading under the symbol of CBRL on the Nasdaq, were placed on Sloan\u2019s \u201cbattleground stock list,\u201d meaning they were poised for a move in either direction depending on the catalyst.<\/p>\n

That catalyst, of course, was a new logo with what was perceived as woke overtones. Gone was \u00adUncle Herschel and his barrel. \u00adRemaining was the company name against its standard yellow background.<\/p>\n

The internet erupted. The stock on Thursday lost nearly $100 million in market value.<\/p>\n

Wait to rebrand<\/p>\n

\u201cMoral of this story is if you\u2019re going to do a rebranding of this type with long and short sentiment so evenly split, you should wait,\u201d Sloan said.<\/p>\n

But as outlined in my book \u201cGo Woke Go Broke; The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America,\u201d waiting is often not an option<\/a>. For all the customer backlash against woke image-making, it remains a staple in marketing departments looking to appeal to new audiences including those that don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

That goes double for the image-making clique on Madison Avenue. They haven\u2019t changed nor will they, which is something Wall Street must now consider.<\/p>\n

In a statement to The Post, Cracker Barrel said Uncle Herschel hasn\u2019t been totally canceled, and that customers can find him on the chains\u2019 menus. \u201cOur values haven\u2019t changed, and the heart and soul of Cracker Barrel haven\u2019t changed,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

But the damage is done from an investor standpoint, with a stock most people never heard of becoming a lightning rod in the cultural wars and feeling the pain. Sloan notes that American Eagle faced similar market dynamics as Cracker Barrel, but the company didn\u2019t embrace a woke rebranding.<\/p>\n

Instead, the jeans retailer went non-woke; it re-branded with an all-American hottie Sydney Sweeney ad. That pissed off the cultural left that bizarrely attempted to frame it as a play on white nationalism. It delighted the rest of us \u2014 consumers and stockholders alike \u2014 because anti-woke messaging sells. American Eagle shares are up around 20% in the month since the ad first appeared.<\/p>\n

My advice to Wall Street, stock analysts and investors is to keep a Post-it note on your computer with this simple message: \u201cGo Woke, Go Broke.\u201d Keep reminding yourself of that \u2014 and start reminding corporate managers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Cracker Barrel market puke has anything to teach Wall Street, it\u2019s that investors who are deciding…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":170706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,261,94505,4209,14548,67,132,68,97583],"class_list":{"0":"post-170705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-companies","10":"tag-cracker-barrel","11":"tag-investments","12":"tag-on-the-money","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-woke-culture"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115081553365666630","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}