Jaguar WOKE Up Dead: Branding Blunder or Brilliance?
- Kieran Can
- Nov 21, 2024
- 4 min read
It takes a special kind of genius to destroy decades of prestige in one fell swoop. Enter Jaguar’s latest rebrand, a masterclass in how to alienate your audience, torch your legacy, and leave people wondering if this was all some elaborate April Fool’s prank. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
But do they see a future we don't?
The famed leaping cat—a symbol of elegance, power, and timeless British engineering—has been streamlined and an additional brand market with the 'j' and 'r' from the new lower case logo are in its place. And there there's the vague, cringe-inducing ad campaign that feels like someone mashed together a corporate diversity seminar and an early 2000s perfume commercial. It doesn’t just miss the mark—it isn’t even aiming at the same target - but this is deliberate. The company is taking aim at a new market, with new electric products but in so doing may be be risking its entire legacy.
The Campaign Where Cars Went Missing
Imagine watching an ad for a luxury car brand and thinking, “Wait, what are they selling again?” Jaguar’s new launch video doesn’t feature a single car. Not one. Instead, it bombards viewers with disjointed metaphors, artsy shots, and a heavy-handed attempt at social commentary that’s as stale as yesterday’s tweets.
And the timing? Chef’s kiss—right after Donald Trump’s win, when anti-woke sentiment is at an all-time high, Jaguar decides to lean into an ideology that’s rapidly losing its cultural currency. This is a masterclass in NOT reading the room. It's as if the entire creative team has been locked in the basement for the past 6 months of a US Presidential election. But why?
“We think there will be a lot of new customers,” said Jaguar MD Rawdon Glover – predicting that a massive 80% to 90% of the upcoming models’ audience will be first-time Jaguar buyers who are 'independently minded, younger, wealthier, urban, and not wanting something run-of-the-mill.'
So Jaguar is making a risky gamble on an uncertain future where 'vehicles will be 100% electric and around twice as expensive as current models' - and with that ethos in mind, they threw the solid present heritage - its prestige, history, unique core of the brand and its current customer base out in the hopes of capturing a refreshed liberal, eco-friendly and likely woke audience of the future.
If this pays off it will be the biggest unexpected rebrand win in a long time - but the timing just could not be worse.
The 3 Main Reason It Feels Like Jaguar Drove Off a Cliff
Nostalgia Is Money, and Jaguar Missed the Memo: Everyone is cashing in on nostalgia, from fashion to fast food. Jaguar could’ve leaned into its storied history, celebrating the style and sophistication that made it iconic and bent that into Future Nostalgia - have they heard of Dua Lipa? Instead, they served up a soulless, forgettable rebrand. Leaning into conservative British and even Establishment values may not have been for everyone, but it certainly would have been great for a storied brand that includes along its drivers, the very right hand of the Queen of England. Perhaps, they are seeing Musk's soul less vehicles and hoping to cash in on the same - but that isn't WHO they are, WHAT they produce or WHY they exist.
Where Are the Cars?: It’s a car brand, yet there are zero cars in the ad. Just 'vibes' and we see how well that turned out for the Harris/Walz campaign. You don’t see Rolex hiding their watches or Apple pretending their products don’t exist. And sure, I understand this is the start of an incoming campaign that dives deeper in but at this point I have to say the words no one ever said: I don't wanna go any deeper.
And most importantly:
Ignoring the Mood of the Room: Trump’s win has shifted the cultural conversation, and “woke” is officially another negative four-letter word for MILLIONS of people. Jaguar’s doubling down on abstract progressivism reads like they’re trying to win an argument no one’s having anymore. Instead of building on its legacy and its current customer base, and bringing them on a journey into the future, Jaguar is betting on a complete shift in its target audience,
The Takeaway
Jaguar had one job: sell cars by reminding people why they’ve loved the brand for generations. Instead, they’ve alienated their base, confused potential buyers, and walked away from the one thing that made them instantly recognizable.
That isn’t a rebrand—it’s a requiem.
But if they emerge from all this bad PR with a winning product and do capture that new audience with this woke-ish approach , well, that's gonna be an actual coup - unlike Donald Trump's attempted one.
Kieran Khan is a digital marketing + branding consultant who has worked on succesful brand digital campaigns for global clients including Microsoft, Johnnie Walker, Absolut Vodka and dozens of other retail, FMCG brands in the Caribbean region. His expertise is in adapting building and redeveloping brand stories for social and digital channels.
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