Look how they've massacred by boy.
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The Jaguar Rebrand: A Lesson in not understanding your clients
By Ethan Burrell - Posted 06/12/2024. Post on LinkedIn also on 06/12/2024.
Lots has been said about the Jaguar rebrand, I think it’s safe to say the marketers behind it are firm believers in ‘all publicity is good publicity’ however I think it’s fair to say from the huge amount of backlash many of us are left wondering what on earth is going on.
I am a long-term fan of the Jaguar brand, and current owner of a Jaguar car, and I feel completely let down and disconnected from the company I’ve grown to love. Today the Jaguar 00 concept (named after how many they will sell) was shown… I’m not going to go into detail as to what I think about the styling (or lack of), or even ‘that’ video advert shown last week or so, but I wanted to go into the reasoning why some many of us car people are so put off by this and why it’s sparked such a reaction.
It's good to be bad.
Back in 2014 Jaguar launched an ad campaign based on the stereotype of British actors playing villains in Hollywood films staring Mark Strong, Ben Kingsley & Tom Hiddleston – the ad featured the then brand-new Jaguar F-Type R Coupe in white being driven in a film like chase sequence by Mark at the wheel, Tom in a helicopter following and Ben in a villain layer watching on. This worked. If you haven’t seen it I employ to watch the advert to get a sense of the old Jaguar. This worked so well that as a 16-year-old boy who already was a fan of Jag (thanks to Top Gear and 2000s Formula 1) I became obsessed with the F-Type; I now own one, and in no short part thanks to this campaign, I had a screenshot from the ad as my desktop wallpaper on my work PC for years.
This was the last sort of rebrand Jag went through; the difference being this was Jag at it’s absolute best, the branding and message was absolutely bang-on and resonated perfectly with the Jaguar audience. The amazing response to this campaign and the fleet of Jaguar cars on sale at the time proves above all else that the brand/image was never the problem.
For me 2012-2018 was Jaguar’s highpoint (at least in recent times), they had a line up of cars that could genuinely go toe-to-toe with their rivals. The updated XF & XE were at their best, good looking, good engines and good interiors but more importantly were so cool compared to the standard BMWs and Audis available at the time. F-Pace & E-Pace were brand new (and continued to sell well up until this self-enforced closure), the XJ is a stunning car and oozes villain energy, the I-Pace is a styling EV which is far more desirable than the limited comparable options (at the time it was seen as if you liked tech you had a Tesla, if you didn’t but wanted an EV you had an I-Pace). And crowning it all was the new and stunning F-Type – filled with character and sounding like a 70s race car – it to me remains the best example of what an exciting GT Sports car should be.
If this was so good why did it fail long term? Well I’ll answer that in two points. 1: Define fail, as I don’t think it did, I still felt the effect of this campaign on myself when I bought my own Jaguar years after it’s launch. The JLR management must disagree however as it’s hard to ignore the drop off in sales in the years post 2018, of course the pandemic would have had an effect on this, but there has been a slowing in sales that much is obvious post-pandemic. This again hasn’t been helped by the public announcements that they’re not selling any new cars until 2026 and then killing off their models one by one afterwards… but I digress. As an outsider (but owner) looking in the slump isn’t down to the campaign and therefore the ‘image’ – but down to the lack of development in the models, which brings me onto point 2: Not keeping up with the competition.
What do I mean by this, to be clear I do not mean electrification of the models, I will go onto this later. I mean extending product far past the usual live span (in comparison to the rivals of Audi/BMW etc) with slight and hardly noticeable facelifts. Gambling everything on an electric future that is already been rolled back into Pandoras box before it’s even arrived as an excuse for not doing a proper 2nd Gen XE, 3rd Gen XF, 2nd Gen F-Pace etc… is just bad business in my mind, and here in lies the mistake and why the sales dwindled – it had nothing to do with the ‘image’ of the brand, that in the end was the only strong part left.
Why chase trends?
I am going to be referring to the electrification of Jaguar as a trend for the purpose of this article. The UKs mandate of banning of pure ICE vehicles running on fossil fuels was pinned originally for 2030, this was then pushed to 2035, and then brought back to 2030 (and is very likely to be pushed back again), we can read between the lines here, this is totally unrealistic to achieve and is not desired by the consumers. Particularly not desired by the consumers of luxury or sports vehicles. Again, I do not think it is unrealistic to think that this is government legislation will never be enforced as the requirement to do will never be met, the advent of carbon-neutral fuels are on the horizon and the natural injection of EVs into the market will take up a portion of new car sales and overtime will make up a percentage of cars on UK roads.
While I have no desire to own an EV I don’t have a problem with them perse, I just do not like government intervention into private markets/private affairs, and the mandating of selling these and only these (effectively) restricts us as individuals & our options, and in a way our freedom, while ignore the environmental impacts of EVs while simultaneously punishing existing vehicles for their impact. The move is forced and unthought out Again, I digress.
What does this have to do with Jaguar. Well JLR decided that Jaguar would become an all-EV super luxury brand several years ago in preparation for this ICE-ban incoming. Now lots of other brands of course had similar thoughts and plans, but during which crucially they did not stop selling their existing products, they did not stop developing new models that are ICE in the meantime (some stopped ICE development but still brought genuine new models in the meantime) meaning that when these legislations were repealed or pushed back they can continue where they left off and still have some new options available in their lineups for EVs, either as separate models or EV versions of ICE cars.
Volvo, Volkswagen, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi and Lotus have repealed their plans for EV only transitions, Jaguar should have done the same. Here in lies the mistake for me, the gamble of all EV and ignoring the writing on the wall, making it public so soon, stopping sales & development of ICE offerings so early leaves them as the black swan stuck now with this very public mistake while their contemporaries can quietly go back to making the cars they want to (and the profits that come with it). Since all existing models are now off sales and years behind the curve and all ICE development for Jaguar stopped so early they are now stuck with this choice and need to ride it out.
They will sell some of these new cars I’m sure when they are finally available – will it give them this huge boost in demand for the Jaguar brand they’re wanting? Or is it like putting everything in on Bronze just as Iron is coming out. We’ll have to wait and see.
What is the point of it all, why not start a new company?
What has led JLR to make this decision in the first place? Not to go around the houses but they obviously felt Jaguar had the wrong image and wanted to chase this ‘EV revolution’ – and in the process felt a complete rebrand and cut off from their heritage and existing customer base is required.
Which for me begs the question if this is what you wanted, a new brand, new image, new clients, why not just make a new car company? Why butcher and existing one and completely alienate their existing (and quite loyal) fans and customers to chase a new customer that may not even exist?
Would a young (as this is obviously aimed at young people) successful person who wants a luxury high performance EV want this? Brands like BYD & Tesla have a ‘cool’ factor about them as they’re new; and are seen as tech items, not really seen as cars, which I think is why traditional car enthusiasts don’t warm to them much as they’re going for that different audience and image? If JLR wants a piece of this plumb why not go after it in the same way, a new EV sub brand, maybe even using the Jaguar facilities to do so, and go all in? Leaving Jaguar to continue as it was making smaller volume more niche ICE vehicles that evoke their heritage and image for the clients that actual want them? These are questions that are probably being asked by some of the JLR board in my mind.
Rightly or wrongly for the uninitiated Jaguar can be seen as an old-man’s car, or quite stuffy, and it will take a lot more than 1 advert and a weird EV concept car to change that in the minds-eye, which raises the question, would said Tesla Model S Plaid customer want to buy a Jag? EV or not? And this will be an expensive car, rumours currently are between £120-£160K for this thing, how large is this audience going to be? People who typically spend that much on a car tend to actually like cars and not these high performance EVs given the strong demand that remains for ICE performance cars. Does this customer they’re going for even exist?
And finally, go woke, go broke.
Summary.
This is all my opinion of course, my thoughts on this will be biased but I think my points stand, Jaguar could have had a future as it was and in my opinion survived just fine, as Aston Martin are proving. JLR are so lost with what to do with the Jaguar brand they’d rather kill it than see it go elsewhere. Jaguar is a brand that is close to me and to Project: Drive and it is for many other people and organisations. I don’t want Jaguar to fail, but I do believe that this will fail and will either force yet another rebrand, or Jaguar will be sold off and be rebuilt, the same way that Geely has done for Volvo and Lotus. The future is questioned for Jaguar, but for me it’s not bright, regardless of what colour you make the Type 00.
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