How to destroy a car brand: Jaguar's billion-dollar blunder



Jaguar is a brand that has been beloved by automotive enthusiasts for decades, thanks mostly to its amazing success in racing during the 1950s, producing Le Mans winners like XK-120C, C-Type, and D-Type.

Then, it made what Enzo Ferrari called "the most beautiful car ever made" — the iconic Jaguar E-Type.

An anonymous insider at JLR confirmed that this rebrand has been just as unpopular inside the company.

Fast-forward to today.

After changing hands many times over the decades, Jaguar now belongs to India's Tata Motors, which also owns Land Rover. It's done pretty well with the latter, especially with its all-new version of the Defender.

As for Jaguar? Well, we've all seen the ad by now.

From hero to zero

No more leaping Jaguar, no more roaring engines, no more classy cars with James Bond styling. The trendy, off-based teaser launch didn’t even show an actual car.

An anonymous insider at JLR confirmed that this rebrand has been just as unpopular inside the company. How much did Jaguar spend on consultants to make this terrible ad? It is too much!

At any rate, last week we finally got a glimpse of how this parade of freaky fashion victims translates into car design: Jaguar's new Type 00 (pronounced Type Zero Zero).

The Type 00 is an electric vehicle, featuring a long hood, sweeping roofline, fastback profile, and 23-inch alloy wheels. It gives the impression that it wants to be a Rolls-Royce Spectre — at a similar price.

Debuting in late 2025, the Type 00 will be built in the U.K. It has all flush surfaces, with a glassless rear tailgate, a panoramic roof, and body-harmonized glazing. It comes in two colors — dubbed Miami Pink and London Blue — and will have a projected driving range up to 430 miles on a single rapid charge.

Raw deal

As part of its shift to an electric-only lineup by 2026, Jaguar also plans to cut ties with most of its dealers. The brand intends to focus on wealthier areas, where potential buyers of its new premium electric vehicles live.

If you're wondering about the rationale behind this radical makeover, look no further than this statement by Jaguar marketing director Santino Pietrosanti:

"We're on a transformative journey of our own, driven by a vision of diversity, inclusion, creativity, policy, and, most importantly, action."

Whatever that's supposed to mean, going all EV at just the wrong moment could cost the brand its future.

I know many are having fun with Jaguar's transition from a macho V-8 brand to a feminine EV brand. But in truth, it is a leading indicator of the entire industry's neutering to the same, green, battery-powered cars.

Almost every brand has seen the light and reverted back to offering gasoline and hybrid vehicles in addition to electric.

Not Jaguar, apparently. Did the company not listen to the news or talk to any consumers?

Customers wanted

”We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently. We wanted to move away from traditional automotive stereotypes," said Rawdon Glover, Jaguar's managing director.

What Glover calls "stereotypes" some might call 100 years of heritage. Either way, the company's erased it with this expensive, fashion-show rebrand Hail Mary.

To be fair, the campaign did pay off in terms of buzz — it got Jaguar $1 billion in earned media. Kudos to whoever put that part of it together. Now, it just needs a new customer base of drivers willing to spend over $100,000 per EV.

Let's hope the new customers are buying. Jaguar only sold 66,000 vehicles in 2023.

Another historic British brand squanders its legacy. Given the direction Britain has gone as a whole the last couple years, this shouldn't surprise anyone. Keep in mind that if you lived there and spoke against this ad campaign on social media, you'd probably be thrown in jail for 20 years.

Fortunately, I'm an American:

‘They’re in a bubble’: How Jaguar TANKED an already-failing brand



Not only did British auto manufacturer Jaguar release a bizarre ad campaign featuring androgynous models — but the ads featured no cars.

“I have no idea what Jaguar is trying to sell us in that ad and who thought this was a good idea,” Jill Savage of “Blaze News Tonight” tells Matthew Peterson and WILL agency founder Isaac Simpson.

Simpson notes that in order to understand the ad, we also have to understand that Jaguar is a “failing brand” and that the brand has “been really struggling for a very long time.”

“So they’ve decided to switch everything over to EV, and they’re going to be 100% electric vehicles, and then not only that, they’re going to charge twice what they’re already charging for their cars,” Simpson explains.


This is where an ad like the one just released comes in as well as its rejection of its iconic logo that features a jaguar to one that just says “Jaguar” in futuristic handwriting.

“Clearly, they asked their marketing team to create a radical new approach to their branding,” Simpson says.

“I don’t think this was an ‘any publicity is good publicity situation,’” he continues. “I think that they’re in a bubble, and I think that the people that create the ads for this particular brand are just living in a bubble as we’ve seen so many times, time and time again with Bud Light and so many other brands.”

According to Simpson, the brand director, who was in charge of this campaign, is “the kind of guy who goes on stage, and he’s wearing a sheer, see-through shirt.”

“You could imagine the type of guy this is,” he says, adding, “They’ve just chased away all the people who would say, ‘Don’t do this.’”

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Jaguar releases insufferably woke ad while Volvo promotes LIFE in new EX90 commercial



Certain car brands are making their political leanings known. Jaguar, for example, recently released an ad in which the brand proved that it’s more committed to DEI and LGBTQ+ causes than it is to selling its own products.

Pat Gray plays the commercial, which features a group of diverse individuals clad in neon, avant-guard clothing doing ... well, nothing — at least nothing related to automobiles.

The phrases “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” “delete ordinary,” “break moulds,” and “copy nothing” are overlaid footage of the strange, almost alien-like actors doing non-car-related activities, such as spinning in a circle while holding a paintbrush, or wielding a sledgehammer.

Perhaps strangest of all is the fact that not a single car or automobile-related item is present in the commercial, making it clear what the company is selling: woke ideology, not cars.

Not only is the company’s advertising insufferably woke, it’s also insufferably stupid, as “U.S. sales are down 80% since 2017.” Given the trajectory of companies that have gone the woke route, it’s likely these sales will plummet even more.

“They only moved 8,000 vehicles last year compared to 350,000 by BMW and Mercedes. And instead of continuing to compete, they're trying to relaunch themselves,” says Jeffy.

“Well, this is a bad relaunch,” says Pat, stating the obvious.

Thankfully, however, Volvo has also released a new commercial, and it is “the exact opposite of the Jaguar ad.”

In this commercial, a couple finds out they’re going to have a baby. The father narrates the story, imagining what it’s going to be like having a daughter. He foresees the challenges, joys, and the fears that come with being a parent. He anticipates who his daughter will be — stubborn like her mom, a rule-bender like her dad.

In the final scene, his pregnant wife walks across the street as another car comes barreling down the road toward her, but because the car is a Volvo and has built-in safety features, an accident is avoided, and both the mother and her baby live. The final scene features the whole family gathered together in the hospital following the baby’s birth.

It’s a tear-jerker of a commercial because it captures the beauty of life and family. It’s also an effective commercial because it’s able to connect these ideas with buying a Volvo EX90.

To see the commercials and hear Pat and the “Unleashed” team’s commentary, watch the clip above.

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In Its New ‘Copy Nothing’ Campaign, Jaguar Copies Bud Light

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-21-at-6.01.30 PM-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Screenshot-2024-11-21-at-6.01.30%5Cu202fPM-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]As the Democrats, Bud Light, and a host of other businesses have learned, people are tired of the crazy. But sure, Jaguar, copy nothing, except for failure.

Critics blast Jaguar over weird new car-less ad: 'Jaguar just pulled a Bud Light'



The British luxury vehicle brand Jaguar released a bizarre new ad Tuesday, prompting intense criticism along with questions about whether the company was still in the business of making cars and whether it may have confused November for so-called Pride month.

Jaguar leaned into the backlash to its loud and car-less campaign ostensibly celebrating deviancy, suggesting that its hackneyed call to defy the "ordinary" — already uniformly and reflexively resisted by massive companies, Western governments, the media, and various other institutions unmoored by tradition — was an introduction to "the future."

Provocative advertisements have long been used to court controversy, secure earned media, and remind the public that a company and its products still exist.

Facing a chicken delivery management crisis in the United Kingdom and widespread closures, the KFC Corporation leaned on the creative agency Mother in 2018 for a novel way to simultaneously apologize and advertise — printing "FCK," the anagram of its brand name, on chicken buckets.

Volkswagen ran its playful "Think Small" campaign in the 1960s to promote the Beetle.

Red Bull, evidently keen to sell more energy drinks, had Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner take a helium balloon up to an altitude of 39 kilometers, jump, break the sound barrier, and land on his feet in New Mexico.

Apple released an ad earlier this year titled "Crush" in which a compressor destroyed the various tools and means for real-world artistic endeavors and in-person activities that its new device would apparently replace and virtualize.

On Tuesday, Jaguar gave it a go, launching an ad campaign on social media with the caption "Copy nothing."

The video opens with a feminine individual with a Pacman-shaped afro leading five androgynous individuals dressed in misshapen apparel out of an elevator and onto a pink moonscape.

The text "delete ordinary" appears over a subsequent shot of an individual painting white lines.

'Fire your marketing team.'

In the following shot, a masculine figure wearing a dress and wielding a yellow sledgehammer appears in a blue room with the text "Break moulds."

Finally, the cast of androgynes, now joined by a heavyset black woman, crews together on the pink moonscape and strikes a well-choreographed pose.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in response to the ad, "Do you sell cars?"

Conservative writer and author Peachy Keenan shared a screenshot of the opening still and wrote, "You lost me at :01."

Keenan added, "Copy nothing [b]ut the worst, stalest cultural trends so you can subvert a storied brand. Congrats and no thanks."

"Well ... we know where the advertising team for Bud Light went," wrote Nick Freitas, Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates.

"Jaguar just pulled a Bud Light," wrote End Wokeness. "Wtf is this?"

Conservative filmmaker Robby Starbuck tweeted, "Fire your marketing team and drop the woke stuff."

When asked, "What the actual hell is this[?]" the company responded, "The future."

The company's corresponding splash page states, "We're here to delete ordinary. To go bold. To copy nothing."

Rather than credit the Ohio band Devo or fashion designer Pierre Cardin with its new aesthetic, Jaguar said in a release that its "transformation is defined by Exuberant Modernism, a creative philosophy that underpins all aspects of the new Jaguar brand world."

Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover suggested to Car Dealer Magazine that the company is looking to sell to "younger, more affluent, and urban livers."

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