Why hopelessly woke Jaguar was set to fail the moment it turned on its customers with this vulgar rebrand
“COPY nothing” was the not-very-memorable slogan that accompanied Jaguar’s disastrous attempt to rebrand itself with a group of multi-ethnic, gender-indeterminate actors apparently posing on the surface of a rocky, pink planet.
The experience has certainly set an example for aspiring advertising executives not to copy.
The car company is reported to be considering sacking its brand agency, Accenture Song, after the much-derided campaign failed to impress potential customers.
Actually, Jaguar’s rebranding was a lot less original than it had us believe. It followed everything in the woke rulebook.
Firstly, fill out your adverts with people who tick every box for diversity, to give the impression that you are making a product for the whole world — even if, as in the case of Jaguar, you are planning to price out most of your loyal customers.
Next, slay a sacred cow — which in this case was the growling jaguar which has adorned the bonnet of the company’s cars for decades. That was replaced by a rather less alluring logo consisting of a J and an R.
Virtue points
Then, when people start to deride your rebrand, try to make them out to be a bunch of bigots.
According to Rawdon Glover, Jaguar’s managing director, those who sneered at the campaign were motivated by “vile hatred and intolerance”.
Er, yes. It is a set of rules which seems to impress people in the small, metropolitan world of the advertising business, but sadly not motorists who just want a solid, dependable car with a dash of style — the very people who were the bedrock of Jaguar’s former success.
Whatever made Jaguar’s executive think it was a good idea to insult its customer base?
According to Rawdon Glover, Jaguar’s managing director, those who sneered at the campaign were motivated by ‘vile hatred and intolerance’
Coming up with a pink theme for its advert, and for its car, was again straight out of the woke rulebook — it is what you do when you have a product which you know has a customer base made up particularly of heterosexual men.
You know it will attract attention by winding them up — whereupon you earn your virtue points by dismissing critics as a bunch of out-of-touch, knuckle-dragging bigots.
Trouble is, though, the rush of publicity isn’t necessarily going to do you much good.
Jaguar has done the same as US brewing giant Anheuser-Busch did in 2023 when it tried to rebrand Bud Light by using a transgender actor, Dylan Mulvaney, in an advertising campaign.
Never has the term “go woke, go broke” been so apt.
Regular drinkers boycotted the beer, leading to a 26 per cent fall in sales in a single month, accounting for one per cent of the company’s global sales. Some analysts downgraded its shares as a result.
Jaguar’s problems can’t be blamed entirely on its relaunch. For years it has been struggling with claims of reliability issues.
Recent car designs have been somewhat turgid — a long, long way from the glory days of the E-Type.
It is true that Jaguar needed to take some drastic steps in order to survive, and few will mourn the models which have been dropped to make way for the company’s relaunch.
But instead of good-quality design, the company has gone for a gimmick. If the Jaguar advert inspired groans, the first sight of its new car wasn’t much better.
“An air-conditioning unit” was one of the more polite descriptions. Others likened it to the car driven by Lady Penelope in the 1960s TV series Thunderbirds.
Combined with the poor design work was the decision to pitch its new cars at the very top end of the market.
Jaguar never was a car for the masses, but it was nevertheless a vehicle which many professional people could aspire to own.
Yet the company now says it is only interested in motorists who can afford to spend well over £100,000 on a new car.
Packed a punch
No doubt it will be able to find a few oligarchs, Premier League footballers and drug-dealers who are prepared to spend that amount of money on a new set of wheels, but it isn’t going to be police officers, country solicitors or small business owners.
Jaguar once lived and breathed everything that was good about Britain.
Now, Jaguar just seems to want to be associated with some of the worst aspects of modern Britain — its spivvy side.
Its cars were understated and slightly conservative on the surface but they packed a punch beneath the bonnet.
Now, Jaguar just seems to want to be associated with some of the worst aspects of modern Britain — its spivvy side.
Its new designs seem calculated to appeal to the raw and vulgar worship of money.
The tragedy is Jaguar has chosen to go down this route at a time when incomes of the wealthy are being squeezed, and when the US — the company’s biggest export market — has imposed punitive tariffs on imported cars.
As it is one of the last surviving remnants of the once-mighty British car industry, we should all want Jaguar to succeed.
Hopefully, sacking its marketing team will be the beginning of a more sensible strategy, to work with its loyal customers rather than to scorn them.