2025 Marketing Hot Topics: From Rebrands to Relevance

In this episode, we look at two of the year’s biggest marketing moments: Cracker Barrel’s quick “un-rebrand” and Duolingo’s “Duo is dead” campaign. Both sparked huge reactions for opposite reasons, and we break down what worked, what didn’t, and what you can learn for your own brand.

We start with Cracker Barrel’s redesign that went too far—modern logo, white walls, and minimalism that erased the comfort customers loved. Thousands spoke up, and the brand reversed course. We discuss how to balance updates with authenticity, gather feedback early, and recover when a strategy misses the mark.

Then we turn to Duolingo, a brand fluent in internet culture. The “Duo is dead” storyline pulled followers into the fun, boosted real app use, and showed how consistent voice builds trust for bold ideas. We share takeaways on testing content fast, listening to community reactions, and knowing when to play it safe or push the edge.

If you care about brand strategy, social storytelling, and turning audience reactions into results, this episode is for you. Subscribe for weekly marketing insights, share it with a teammate, and leave a comment. What do you think they did right or wrong?

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Meet your hosts and learn more about Kickstart Collective at kickstartcollective.co

Kickstart Collective is a creative marketing agency based in Wilmington, NC. We offer our clients a creative advantage through creative content and marketing strategies. 

Transcript

Setting The Topic: Iconic Campaigns

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Kickstart Your Week. Today we're going to talk about what I think could already be considered iconic branding and marketing campaigns from some bigger brands this year, and we'll see what takeaways we can apply to our own strategies.

Cracker Barrel’s Rebrand Backfire

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

So let's start out strong with uh Cracker Barrel.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Gosh, Cracker Barrel. Where do we even begin?

SPEAKER_01 0:25

They're crazy rebrand slash unrebrand.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

So earlier this year, or not even that long ago, Cracker Barrel decided that they were going completely modern. They were changing all their branding. They were removing the man from the logo. They were even remodeling all of their stores and painting the walls white, taking all the decor down, putting up like minimalist decor. And people were not happy about that.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

It was like Chipotle for Southern people.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

That's a good way to put it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah. People were really not happy and they voiced that. And you know which happens. Right. But Cracker Barrel listened and undid everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

They actually took account of like what the customers were saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah.

Customer Backlash And Fast Un-Rebrand

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Took account of what at that point media outlets were saying too. Like, what is happening? It got huge. And they were like, all right, let's address this and actually like go back to our roots and what makes our customers actually want to be here in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Which is pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I think they realized that you know Cracker Burrow was just nostalgic for a lot of people. And a lot of people had like emotional ties to their original branding and and just vibe of the restaurant. And people just didn't feel that way about the new clean look and feel.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah. I I feel like that's kind of like a good lesson there with like know your base.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Because I, at least for my my personal experience, was anytime I would go to Cracker Barrel, it's with, you know, typically maybe a grandparent or like maybe some family comes in or something after church or on Sunday or something like that. And we get we go and get some some food there. And so it was just very nostalgic, pretty cozy. Yeah. And kind of stripping all that away, just it was like, what even are we anymore? What is this? You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think it was pretty cool that they kind of bounced back in that way and switched it. I mean, it it was a matter of weeks when they went from rebrand to like, all right, my bad, and go back to what we were doing before.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yeah, it was it was very a very quick transition.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

But yeah, I think I you're right. I think a takeaway from that is to just know your audience, know who you're talking to. And you know, a rebrand is not necessarily a bad thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah, absolutely.

Lessons: Nostalgia And Knowing Your Base

SPEAKER_01 2:48

It it depends on who you are and um what your brand is. So sometimes a rebrand is fitting. Yeah. But I think it's important to in a case like that, even if you're not a brand that's as big as Cracker Barrel, like it's never a bad idea to get feedback from people and you know, bounce ideas off of them and see what the response is. Because if it's if it's that bad, then what's the point of even changing in the first place? You know? So yeah, knowing your audience and and they did a good job at listening to feedback too.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

I think so. They they really people hammered it. I actually went home uh and checked the some of the Instagram reels around the time that they were in that transition. And one of their Instagram things, I mean, they have like a 360,000 followers on Instagram. They had a thousand people on one of their reels, like all organic comments, not like a paid ad thing, not like a tag your friend type of thing, all saying, What are you doing? Please bring back the cozy. Like, what is this? Yeah, and it was it, I just think it was so cool to see how fast they actually listened. Uh-huh. And their core kind of kept them to who they are, like know who you are.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Um, okay, so should we get into the the second example?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yeah, I think so. Like segueing into that, like yeah, with taking customer feedback and like strong like support from your community and from your socials. I our next company that we're talking about, Duolingo. Yeah, I think they do a pretty good job of that.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

They do. Yeah. They're they're, you know, they have a unique um tone online. They're very, you know, joke heavy, meme heavy. Um I would say they're sassy even. Like, but people love it and they do a really good job of responding in comments and taking feedback from people and playing along with them. Um, have you seen their campaign earlier this year of Duo is dead?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

I actually did, and I saw it in the moment too. I wasn't following them on any of their pages, but it got back to me somehow through one of the lines of communication through like social media stuff.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

I was like, wait, they're getting rid of this mascot.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

It was huge, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

And it wrapped me in. I I I researched for a several minutes. Yeah. I was like, what? I checked this out.

Audience-Driven Storytelling And Conversions

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Yeah. So if if you have not heard, earlier this year, uh Duolingo ran a marketing campaign. I guess you could call the title Duo is dead. Yeah. And they essentially killed off their mascot. And it was this huge thing online that the Duolingo owl is dead now. And it just snowballed and evolved into this huge online campaign because of other people, like because of people's response. And I mean, there was other brains getting in. I think I think people were speculating other company mascots were was the one that murdered the Duolingo owl. I think, I think the um scrub daddy got thrown in there as a suspect at one point.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Oh, I love that. I didn't even know that.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

It was just, it was a lot of fun, and people really got into it, and Duolingo like played off of people's conspiracies online, and they they really embraced the community feedback.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Absolutely. And it and it felt kind of like um how do you say it? Like, I guess audience driven in a way. Yeah, they were heavily taking feedback from what the audience was saying, and like you were saying, playing into that. So you in a way, it kind of really made you feel like you had like a like a small part in what was gonna happen next in the story for this brand that happens to teach you other languages. I thought it was pretty cool. It was it was impressive how they did that.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

And I I heard that this whole campaign from like the conception of the idea to launching it was six days. Wow. And it was such a huge campaign, and not only did they get so much attraction on social media, but I I saw that there like people started doing more lessons on the actual app, sure too.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Right. So which is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

You know, it went it went past social media. Um they they got real conversions from that.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

So with the with Duolingo, what do you think is like a good lesson to take from that?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I think again, know your audience. Yeah, not everyone can be a Duolingo and and can put out that type of content. You know, if you're a professional who has only been putting out professional content and then you decide to be silly and like take a dig at someone online like they do, people might be thrown off.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

That could be crazy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

It could go downhill pretty fast, right? Um, but yeah, I would just say know your audience and um be timely with your content, with trends, with campaigns, and just like cracker barrel, you know, listen to what people are saying online, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Absolutely. And I think that kind of like ties into Cracker Barrel too, just like knowing your base, like knowing your customer base, like what they expect from you has a whole lot to do with the outcome of any brand um campaigns or anything like that. And you can kind of like from your camp, like from your audience and your core audience, you can kind of know how far to press it. Like with Doolingo, they've kind of nurtured that they can press it pretty far into these pretty, like zany like ideas, but it works and it hits nine out of ten times.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah. Sometimes the risk is worth it, but make sure it's calculated risk.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Exactly.

Wrap-Up And Newsletter CTA

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah. Okay, great. Well, thanks for listening today. Make sure you are signed up for our email newsletter so that you can get more marketing tips like this every Monday. See you soon.