I am not a luxury brand consumer, nor one of electric vehicles. but I might be one day, so it’s perfectly fine for me to have an opinion about Jaguar’s recent rebranding. We are all lifelong influencers, so what we think and feel counts. It is the job of the advertising executive to make you think and feel the right things so that when, one day, you decide to buy something, their logo is the one you pick.
The emotional investment the whole world now has for the Jaguar brand is something money can’t buy and a committee couldn’t possibly have planned. We dream about reactions like this in the industry (with our fingers crossed that it goes in the right direction.) As a creative director in the advertising and marketing fields, I headed an internal agency and production company, helping clients launch and build brands. When a brand is stuck, you might rebrand or do a brand refresh. Every aspect of the product and positioning is dissected, discussed, sent to a committee, vetoed by a bigwig and sent through the mill again. I once was part of a rebranding exercise for a financial services client. The brand knew their landscape had changed and it was time they adjusted to emerging market shifts and expectations. After many months, plenty of Rand and much prodding and squeezing of the logo, they ended up changing only a slightly oval circle to a perfectly round one. If you were not sitting around that boardroom table approving the new logo, you would not be able to tell the new one from the old. That is how sensitive and powerful these brand insignia are, so for Jaguar to completely walk away from its legacy in that specific way is nothing short of spectacular and worthy of all the attention it is getting. What were they thinking?
“Who is the customer? Who are the people that will buy this car?” This is the first question we all asked. It was also the question JLR’s financial officer asked its Chief Creative Officer, Gerry McGovern. “If you design it properly there will be a market for it,” he replied. He instructed his team to create something that evoked a “visceral sense of desire.” The Jaguar Type 00 had a look and feel first before technical and mechanical details will be considered, much later in the process. McGovern explains he is guided by other luxury brands, including the culture of the French luxury fashion and perfume houses, so he launched the design concept as much a car as a piece of art and it will appear at the Miami Art Week as such.
The key drivers for luxury brands are desirability and exclusivity. The quickest way to make something rare is to make it expensive. Jaguar will no longer compete with Mercedes and BMW; it will come head-to-head with Rolls Royce. Moving a product up the price ladder is a strategic decision and a risky one, but in the case of Jaguar, it would probably be more perilous if they hadn’t done it. JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) has had previous success with this strategy, having applied it with the Range Rover. The company had been experiencing financial difficulties for a few years but has turned things around more recently. One of the key elements in JLR’s turnaround has been the ability of the Range Rover to sell what Forbes magazine calls ‘unfeasibly expensive’ models. Volumes have dropped, but profits have increased. The Range Rover and Land Rover models reportedly now make $25,000 profit each, on average.
You and I might worry about how much a car costs and how functional it is, but the future owner of a Jaguar Type 00 won’t care about any of that. And if we plebs think the car is ugly or looks like a cross between Lady Penelope’s Rolls Royce, a Cybertruck, and an air conditioner, it will be a sign of distinction to them. Prof. Gerry McGovern OBE ordered his team to pursue something emotionally compelling. “Be brave, be fearless,” he instructed. “In the past, we have been too preoccupied with being loved by everyone.” McGovern did something with the Jaguar Type 00 that he had never done before – he chose the design direction via a voting process. After briefing three design teams, they ended up with 17 full-sized models which were put on display on the lawn. Senior people, board members, and select others were asked to vote freely, but with McGovern steering direction. He encouraged them to avoid anything familiar or retrospective. “But if you see a group of cars you are shocked by or makes you feel really uncomfortable that is something you should be thinking seriously about.” The voting was unanimous. Transitioning from designs that people loved to designs that make people shocked and uncomfortable is not necessarily the way I would have gone, but it is valid. I understand that JLR leadership would trust McGovern with his judgement, considering what he had done with Land Rover and Range Rover.
The brand has been clear about looking for new customers and is happy to release 80% of its current base. The USA has been named as a primary market. Thus, one can reasonably look at the creativity accompanying the new brand launch through that lens. Officially, the creative direction given was ‘exuberant modernism’ but ‘do the opposite to what Musk did with Tesla and represent the opposite values’ would also have worked. Western culture, led by the USA, has become a bipolar place with defined tribalism that has shown remarkable salience across various spheres, including what you believe about climate, who you vote for, your diet, what you wear, and whom you choose as a villain in other peoples’ wars. Brands are consumed in the same way. Presenting something that instinctively will not appeal to the testosterone-filled, meat-eating population who support Trump is a fair gamble. McGovern took over Jaguar 3.5 years ago, during the last US voting cycle. It was 50/50 for much of that time if you were hedging your bets on which side would triumph socially and politically. Thus, you might pick a general direction and commit, especially if you see yourself ‘living the brand.’ You might give a nod to the aesthetics of Dune with a bit of Warhol thrown in. Why not be recognisable to Generation Z with some ‘brat’ zeitgeist in the mix? Show gender fluidity and a snoot-cocking to conservative tenets, then go live. These launch events take a long time to put together and this one must have been conceived before the too-big-to-rig US election results, the meteoric rise of podcasts and the collapse of CNN viewership. I suspect the campaign might not have been as ‘exuberant’ if done now, but one can only speculate.
I also wonder if McGovern might revise his concept of exclusivity and its tonality. Prestige is about being difficult to attain, not simply playing hard to get. What is the difference between haughty elitism and being in a class of your own? It is the shape of a roof, the curvature of a bonnet and the choice of colour. Despite all the data and expertise, branding and advertising blur into a mysterious wormhole of gut instinct where agonising over the exact roundness of a sphere becomes as intense as completely reimagining a luxury British car brand.
It is science, art, business, and creativity combined with a lot of up-your-own-arsery.
I have no idea how much of the Jaguar campaign was carefully thought-through or just ill-advised megalomania from the top structures, whom I know from experience to conveniently take 20 pages of careful research, only to use it as fans to wave on their massive egos, ignoring meticulous market research, product advice and media guidance. They then blame any failures on your 30″ TV ad that they gave you two pennies and a sixpence to produce.
Whether Jaguar succeeds or fails, it will be fun to watch, because we are all emotionally invested now. Cars are highly personal items. They are extensions of ourselves, members of the family, and metaphors for the journey of life itself, so this is serious stuff. I still dream of driving my 1976 Volkswagen Beetle. If I had enough money to buy another car, it would be a vintage red Beetle. Maybe a lime-green one.
[Photo: Jaguar Land Rover]
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