why your customers can't explain what you do
Aug 25, 2025
Brought to you by The Art Of Positioning Podcast
Ask your best client to describe your business to a colleague.
Watch them stumble.
"Well, they're like... they do this thing where... it's hard to explain, but they're really good."
That's not a customer problem. That's a positioning problem.
And when businesses face positioning problems, they almost always reach for the wrong solution: a rebrand.
Take Cracker Barrel.
They didn't have a positioning problem - everyone knew exactly what they were.
But someone decided 56 years of being that place you easily recognize from the highway needed “modernizing."
So they ditched the barrel, the overall-clad guy, and rustic thing for clean minimalism and egg-yellow branding. FFS. 😒
So here’s my official message to Cracker Barrel:
clears throat
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Welcome to the world of brands blending in with each other, Cracker Barrel!
Here's your starter pack just to get you feeling at home, darling:
Clean, minimalist, and modern EVERYTHING
Attitude of 'copying no one'
Basic font and shapes kit
Unchanged operations, services, and products
Fluffy 'new' values that actually don't mean anything
Now, gently pats their forearm
If you have any questions, we've set up a group chat with some brilliant leading brands; you might know a few of them, so feel free to head in.
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📸: GIPHY
Okay, now that’s said, let’s look at why rebrands keep happening and why they’ll continue to happen unless something big really changes.
There’s two big reasons:
A. We're visual creatures. New logo, fresh colors—boom, instant proof something changed. Executives can point to it and say "see, we're different now." It's tangible evidence of leadership action.
B. The second reason is well said by Amy Heidersbach, 5x CMO and board advisor, calling it out for what it is: ego. New CEO comes in, needs to leave a mark. Rebrand becomes their legacy project. Proof they did something during their tenure.
Both reasons for rebranding miss the same thing: rebrands change how you look, not how you work.
And don’t mistake the level of damage a rebrand has on a business:
Twitter's X rebrand wiped $20 billion in brand value. Two years later, 55% of users still call it Twitter.
Cracker Barrel lost nearly $100 million in market value within 24 hours of their announcement.
Jaguar's 2024 rebrand caused a 97% sales collapse in Europe. Seriously, only 49 cars were sold across the continent in April. I guested on an episode where we took a look at this rebrand and explored how to fix it.
It's not just the big brands.
Smaller companies aren't exempt either.
A local home-services company spent $50K on "modernizing" their brand, then dealt with the aftermath of longtime clients’ struggle to recognize them and what they stood for.
Another professional service firm rebranded to look more "corporate" to attract elite clientele, and suddenly they sounded like everyone else in their space - effectively blending them out of the picture.
An accounting firm went minimalist and lost the personality that made them memorable to buyers.
The pattern repeats:
40% of rebrand efforts fail to deliver positive ROI.
Companies that built decades of recognition throw it away for modern aesthetics that competitors copy within months.
Of course, not all rebrands are bad.
Legal issues force change. Negative associations demand distance. Mergers create new entities. Market shifts require repositioning.
But most rebrands? They're vanity projects that solve the wrong problems.
Look, the problem 90% of the time when I'm speaking to business owners isn't the visual identity, they’re:
Confused by what you actually do for them.
Turned off by how you position yourself in their world.
Unsure about why they should choose you despite your claim of ‘best service’ and that your team ‘cares.’
And in these cases, a rebrand isn't going to do shit.
Instead of jumping the gun on a rebrand, see what's actually affecting the business.
Send out feelers.
Test how your brand performs right now.
Find where real friction exists.
Let's get into the how 👇
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The most frequent issue that comes up in 'rebrands', brand refreshes and even repositioning is that they're not taking into account what that looks like in the day-to-day operations.
Is it adding work?
Is it integrated well so that customers perceive it at every touchpoint?
Is it even known by the whole team beyond some silly event around a logo reveal that the teams only excited about because you're paying them?
Season 3 of The Art of Positioning podcast is about tackling this side of brand strategy - making sure it friggin' works. And this episode bringing on expert guests 🌈 Desiree Goldey 🌈 and Juan Carlos Ruz Morales tackles this from a DEI, human resources and recruitment perspective.
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Badass Tip
Test your brand's real performance before considering any visual changes.
Questions to ask by business area:
🦘 Sales
Ask recent prospects who didn't purchase:
"How would you describe our business to someone else?"
Listen for inconsistency or confusion.
Ask your team:
"What's the most common objection we hear about what we do?"
Track which deals stall because prospects think we're something we're not.
🦘 Customer service
Ask existing customers:
"How do you typically explain our services to others who ask about us?"
Notice if their descriptions match your messaging.
Ask your team:
"What complaints suggest customers expected something different than what we delivered?"
This reveals positioning gaps.
🦘 Marketing
Monitor social media comments and DMs for common questions people ask about what we actually do. Look for confusion patterns.
Check website analytics to see which pages visitors spend the most time on. High bounce rates on key pages signal positioning confusion.
Review form submissions to see if there are frequent requests for things you don't offer. This shows brand messaging attracts wrong-fit prospects.
🦘 Operations
Ask your team individually:
"In one sentence, what problem do we solve for customers?"
"When you tell people where you work, how do you explain what the company does?"
Compare answers for consistency. Misalignment here signals external confusion.
🦘 HR
Ask new hires after their first month:
"How would you describe this company's approach/values based on how we actually work?"
Compare to your stated values.
Ask job candidates:
"What do you think this company does based on our materials?"
This reveals brand clarity gaps - of course, it unveils how prepared they were for the interview, but it shows another angle of how your brand is seen.
🦘 Finance
Track:
The ratio of how much you're spending on marketing versus new customer revenue generated.
The customer acquisition cost trend over the past 12 months.
The numbers around repeat purchases versus one-time buyers.
Rising costs without better quality leads suggest positioning problems. And low repeat rates can signal that customers didn't get what your brand promised.
It’s time to stop looking to the logo and visuals as the first thing to change when difficulties arise; instead, let’s ask, "Do people immediately understand why they need us?"
-B
