Jaguar Bewilders Its Fans With Shocking Rebranding Campaign That No One Understands

I wasn't necessarily a Jaguar fan, although I followed the brand over the years and enjoyed driving some of its sports models, most notably the F-Type. I wasn't a fan of the XF, which I considered too bloated, but overall, I appreciated the diversity Jaguar was bringing to the luxury car segment. That's why I was curious to see what the new rebranding was about, so I checked out their media website. It was unusually colorful, with a bunch of people looking far too serious for what they were wearing.

I scrolled down to see more, but it was more of the same. To my confusion, no car was involved, although I expected at least a teaser of the upcoming concept Jaguar will unveil next month. I decided that somebody hijacked the press page, so I returned to what I was doing with the thought of coming back later. It turned out I was wrong, and Jaguar was solely responsible for this hijacking. What's worse, the website still looks the same today, so what is going on?

Jaguar, a carmaker with a history that spans over 100 years, suddenly decided that its image was to blame for the brand's disappointing sales performance. To fix its problems, the British carmaker ditched everything, from its ethos to its logo and lettering, and shocked everyone with a bizarre PR campaign. This saw the familiar Jaguar symbol, which has endured since 1945, replaced by a visual package that seems to copy the fonts used by Smart in its logo.

To make things worse, Jaguar kicked off the rebranding campaign with a controversial video that made many uncomfortable and, even more puzzling, contained no reference to what the company was trying to do: sell luxury cars. For a gentleman's car brand, which should be a monument of conservatism, it had the effect of shock therapy. Not that conservatism has served it well in the past decade, considering the falling sales and brand deterioration.

However, those who saw the new brand image almost unanimously rejected it. Starting with the new logo, or should I say logo set, because it comprises four distinct elements, and ending with the campaign's video, everything is controversial. Although I agree that controversy helps spread the buzz in a world with the attention span of a three-year-old, I'm not sure this is the kind of attention Jaguar was seeking.

The logo, for once, might have been the best option for a bottle of perfume or even the Smart brand, but Jaguar? This is a car brand that competes with Mercedes-Benz and aims to reposition toward the higher end of the market, perhaps giving Rolls-Royce and Bentley the chills. The new Jaguar lettering says nothing that makes you think of luxury cars. A tad more inspired, I could certainly see the new "makers mark," showing a leaping cat, adorning a Jaguar grille.

Whatever Jaguar tried with the logo, it trashed it with the promo video. The new brand ethos is "Copy nothing," yet I have a hard time thinking of this as original. This looks like countless other efforts to paint a stale company as bold and imaginative. Even worse, it resembles a fashion show for a Jean Paul Gaultier collection. And it's filled with cliches, like the one of a woman swinging the hammer to "break molds." This looks a lot like the 1984 Apple Macintosh commercial.

This is even worse than the new logos. Trying to build a new brand identity on the copy-nothing mantra and do the exact opposite is a strange endeavor. Jaguar executives might think this is ultra-luxury and ultra-modern, but it's ultra-weird instead. Some of the most appreciated communications professionals believe this campaign is disastrous, even when you go beyond the questionable taste.

In a blunt message, Lulu Cheng Meservey, co-founder of Rostra PR group, highlighted the crisis Jaguar is going through, with sales down 70% in the US in the past five years. That makes selling cars the number one goal of any rebranding campaign, which should have focused on showing that Jaguar understood what was wrong and what caused the slump. That would be outdated technology and the lack of new models, besides a confusing market positioning.

"That message is roughly the opposite of what Jaguar should be saying, which is some version of 'our cars are engineered to the gills and go very, very fast.' Art school grads simply aren't associated with elite engineering ability, I'm sorry," wrote Meservey on X. "So the same way Jaguar lost the ultra-luxury segment without winning the premium segment, with this campaign they're losing the 'classic sophistication' audience without winning the 'Just Stop Oil' audience. It's risky to be an orphan brand."

Jaguar sold fewer than 67,000 cars worldwide in 2023, almost half the number it sold in the fiscal year 2019/2020, which included the pandemic lockups. The rebranding campaign aims to turn things around by conveying a new brand image that would be more appealing to car buyers. But this is far from being Jaguar's most controversial move. Scrapping all its current vehicles (except the F-Pace, which will continue for a while in some markets) without having anything to put in place is arguably more damaging to the brand.

Jaguar is expected to launch three ultra-luxury EVs, with the first set to be unveiled at Miami Art Basel next month. But they won't launch soon, with the first expected only in 2026. While the Miami event seems fitting for this rebranding campaign, many question whether it's the perfect ambiance for unveiling a next-generation luxury car. Hopefully, that's what the Jaguar Design Vision Concept is, not just another bizarre art installation.