Even so, the decision by Jaguar to restyle its branding this week – focusing on an advert full of models but with no car in it – already looks set to join the great marketing flops of all time.
Jaguar has been a company with problems for many years, but through everything, its brand remained incredibly strong. Trashing it is only going to damage the company even further.
I’ve been looking – aghast, obvs – at Meghan over the past couple of years. She talks endlessly about her brand. Abuout developing it. And, well, she doesn’t really have a brand. She might be trying to create one but she’s not got one.
An extant brand means something. Has connotations. Forgetting this is, to me, to suffer from Meghan Disease.
As, I think, Jaguar is doing here. Gin and Jags, yes, OK, Har Har. But there really is a “brand” of somewhat archaic Englishness, Terry Thomas etc. And it’s a powerful one. Quite seriously I once did a $300k deal on a handshake as my Russian cooperator in the adventure said that everyone knows an Englishman’s word is his bond. Whether this brand is true is another thing but it undoubtedly exists.
And, if we’re honest about it, that’s the thing that Jaguar has to sell. Given the move to EVs the old engineering of the ICE cars is no longer relevant. The only way to sell an EV box at a premium is to have a brand. Which appears to be just what they’re throwing away.
Most odd.
Future investment perhaps.
Jags are owned by Old Men and usually ones who can afford to keep two because of their unreliability.
Rich middle aged men these days are increasingly gay or drag queens.
Ergo…
Part of the appeal of Jaguar was the roaring engine, the faint smell of oil, and the public knowledge that you were master of a bigger combustion process than the next guy. With that going, I suspect Jaguar decided on a desperate roll of the dice.
Oh, and the fact that their head of brand strategy looks like someone who you’d keep your kids away from.
An advert can make a brand look grest:-
https://youtu.be/FYQHDadIDxk?si=5XYaGNXFOEosalRy
Or make it look like a bad joke:-
https://youtu.be/a1eOmsEG01k?si=P5wRjp_IvpiLKW2F
Just a few short years ago Jaguar got it right:-
https://youtu.be/fGas3e7p_9A?si=3YjCaBm36ihi0YT1
But now?
My first ever (now sadly missed) car was a second-hand 3.6 Jaguar Sovereign in British Racing Green. Beautiful car.
The modern ones? I wouldn’t have one if they were giving them away, after this…
I had two XJRs before leaving the UK in2002… Stunning performers and beautiful too (IMHO).
The current lot, not so much and the new advert would certainly put me off choosing the brand…
Praps they are keeping the old logo for when this current (see what I did there?) milk float madness has passed?
I suspect reneging on a $300k deal in Russia is a seriously bad idea, whether the contract is in writing or not.
Oh, I had one of those too. For a very much larger sum. In that one they didn’t even tell me that it was really going ahead until three days after they’d delivered the four truckloads to Rotterdam. Really – I called them up to ask if that thing we’d been talking about a month back was, in fact, going to happen. To be told that it had and where’s the money?
Had a couple of XJs pre-kids. Given these were 10 year old 150k miles+, the reliability was very good. There’d be stuff like suspension components for the MoT, bits of corrosion, a new battery in one, but to be expected given age/mileage. Never failed to start, never broke down.
Once the mortgage is paid off I’ve promised myself an XKR droptop. Their 2010-on stuff seems to forget what a Jaaaag is, and tries to be BMW. But BMW already had the market for reasonably-well thought-out cars with reasonable driving engagement and crashy, fidgety ride sewn up. Why would you buy a Jaguar which looked pretty much the same, drove pretty much the same, had the same excessive bumpiness but a much worse user interface?
Bugger Inspector Morse I remember them for a group of bankers who lived down the road one of whom looked after their Jag Mk2 which had had a few mods. Terrific car. When I say bankers, that’s how they made their living – from banks.
Well, anywhere really that needed a speedy exit…
It isn’t even ‘woke’; it is just a beyond-parody example of mindless modish fiddling with something which didn’t need changing.
The best way for a performance car manufacturer to differentiate itself would be to stay 100% ICE. We all know that there is neither the appetite nor grid capacity for EVs, so switching to EV only seems as demented as the marketing.
My father had an old Jag for about a year when I was 11, it was a great car but unfortunately the automatic gear box died and it was too expensive to repair. I always promised myself a new Jag when I had paid off the mortgage and the pension fund looked good.
I achieved that when I was 50 and treated myself to an new (old style) XJ6. It was great and I did 180k miles in 10 years with only one serious problem, the drivers seat heating failed. Unfortunately I couldn’t justify keeping it when we bought the motorhome.
I’m glad I bought when I did, its being going down hill since about 2010 and I wouldn’t buy any of the current offerings.
Simon Neale,
“Oh, and the fact that their head of brand strategy looks like someone who you’d keep your kids away from.”
https://x.com/WillKingston/status/1859240338075844684
I remember thinking during the Bud Light fiasco that the fatal flaw was that they had a college educated woman running it, who just don’t think like Billy Bob out in Arkansas, doesn’t even know any Billy Bobs. I remember assuming that some very clever people were one step ahead of me, but no, they just didn’t get how hostile rough straight men were towards twinks.
Men, women, straights and gays just don’t tick the same ways. Women have a better idea what appeals to women, men have a better idea what appeals to men.
And if they’re now chasing the women and gay market, well, good luck with that, because that’s where almost everyone but BMW are.
John
“Just a few short years ago Jaguar got it right:-”
Terrific campaign. Don Logan, Loki and well, anything with Mark Strong.
Matt
Do keep your promise to yourself. I much regret selling my 5.0 example. You’ll need a good specialist to maintain it, the absence of which was my only problem.
Nobody:
Absolutely not a single living human being:
Jaguar: OOGA BOOGA!
Looks like a young Angela Rayner in that second Virgin ad……..thats got to put you off flying with them surely?
Time to use a favourite phrase of mine – Jaguar have fallen prey to a “2 poofs and a poodle” couple -https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14106133/American-marketing-guru-Jaguar-rebrand-BLM-New-York-British.html#newcomment
Ahead of its re-launch as a purely electric vehicle marque, it unveiled a new logo that apparently should be written as JaGUar, that “seamlessly blended upper and lower case characters in visual harmony” – whatever the heck that might mean.
FaGUar. For the discerning masturbator.
There are going to be a lot of Chinese EVs flooding the market very soon, from companies we have barely heard of but which are making very good cars at very cheap prices
It was always going to be a struggle for the new Jags to compete with the likes of BYD and Geely as well as Tesla – but with this weak, insipid branding, it may well prove impossible.
I’m guessing ChinkWagon XL5 probably won’t come with a cast of gap-toothed negresses and bald gendermongs dressed like extras from Zoolander.
China will grow larger!
Moq – lol
Santino Pietrosanti, who boasted at an awards dinner that Jaguar had ‘established over 15 DEI groups’ as part of a ‘transformative journey’,
Get woke, go broke(n anus).
And at Jaguar we proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community because we know that originality and creativity thrives in spaces where people are free to be themselves
What could be more original and creative than chemsex manlove?
‘We’ve launched major policy revisions such as transitioning at work to drive equity and support for our communities embracing individuality as our superpower.
Would you drive me? I’d drive me. I’d drive me, HARD.
Ominously for long-time Jaguar owners, he also vowed: ‘This is only the start – and it’s going to be incredible.’
Narrator: Jaguar went bankrupt eight months later.
His most notorious move saw it ditch its classic iconography, including the ‘growler’ badge
Angela Rayner on suicide watch.
With 20 million views of the announcement on X, formerly Twitter, alone, Jaguar PR bosses will be arguing there such no such thing as bad publicity.
Just ask Crowdstrike, Boeing or Myra Hindley.
FWIW, an ad with no cars in it could still be effective, a lot of ads barely show/identify the brand, or at least only at the very end. An ad with a James Bond type that only referenced Jaguar at the very end, for example, might work. But these strange humanoids?
“because we know that originality and creativity thrives in spaces where people are free to be themselves”
So asking an AI for a 30-year-old Benetton advert is what passes for “originality and creativity” these days, is it?
There are some serious intersectionalist nutters in advertising. This is what happens when they manage to gain control of a campaign.
My first ever (now sadly missed) car was a second-hand 3.6 Jaguar Sovereign in British Racing Green. Beautiful car.
I think I’m in love with JuliaM.
Sam – Copy Nothing, except every single other off-putting identikit GloboHomo marketing campaign, to the point where it looks like a bad parody of why Trump won.
It’s nothing new. I’ve been quoting the “Poetry Society” episode of Hancock’s Half-Hour for years. Tony appears in some kind of outré clobber, much to Sid’s amusement…
1959, that was.
Faguar – the ” Mans Car” bought by men for the man in their lives .
I wonder how pissed off the engineering division is right now. And the workers . . .
Sam – I heard the BBC is updating W. E. Johns’ books for stunningly diverse modern audiences.
Working title: Niggles.
Join the club Henry!
The purely platonic online club, obviously…
The real question is – who are they trying to shift as their audience?
Transgender Zoomers? You know, the people with no money and less sense? Maybe the handful of grandchildren of rich celebrities whose own children didn’t already squander their money? Those people buy Bentley’s, not Jags and Jag’s gonna have to really up their quality/luxury game to compete – by which time those Zoomers will have killed themselves/squandered all the money and the bank will be repossessing their cars.
Its this weird thing where businesses are chasing ‘the modern audience’ – none of whom are ever the sort of people to actually *buy their product*.
You see this most in modern media – its all made for BHLW’s, none of who were ever interested enough in the stuff to pay money for it but will scream bloody murder if you don’t cater to them.
BHLW? Ah, “Bifocal Hybrid Laser Welding”
I thought BHLW was a Sumerian demon-god.
Agammamon said:
“You see this most in modern media – its all made for BHLW’s, none of who were ever interested enough in the stuff to pay money for it but will scream bloody murder if you don’t cater to them.”
Isn’t the problem that the main objective of most advertising people is to look good to their chums?
Not a problem confined to advertising either.
(Not sure what a BHLW is; Bleeding Heart Liberal Whinger?)
Don’t even own a car, or have a drivers’ license for that matter…
But anything that Nebulous in purpose wouldn’t sell at thing to me.
A fancy new Theatre Show/Festival? OK.. Y ou got me going to your site. It’s artsy enough to have a second look.
This should somehow sell a damn overpriced car? Even if I had the money, I’d Drop It Like It’s Hot…
Probably double-tap to make sure it stays ded.
To add to the Nostalgia… Even riding Shotgun/Navogator … The couple of times I sat my arse in a Jag, it was a …good experience…
Certainly good enough for 1000 miles ( on occasion), definitely Good Enough to get, as BiS regularly tells us How It Works, the immediate attention of the more commercially inclined Ladies, not to mention the host of amateurs…., when you get out of one even at the most backwards of dumps.
Jag had a Name. This? … As an EV? Good luck on ya.
‘Not sure what a BHLW is; Bleeding Heart Liberal Whinger?’
Thank you Richard. I’d never heard of it either!!