Jaguar’s Managing Director Rawdon Glover says the intended message of the campaign had been lost, and also denied that it was meant as a woke statement.
JAGUAR found itself on the receiving end of widespread mockery last week, after social media users overwhelmingly criticised the company’s rebranding campaign.
Many said the historic British brand’s new ‘double J’ logo would be more suited to a handbag or kitchen appliance.
Further to that, its advert featuring flamboyant models with outrageous hairstyles, was criticised for being “crazy woke” and out of tune with Jaguar’s traditional petrol-head clientele.
The grammar police also had a field day about the new ‘JaGuar’ branding that features a mix of upper-case and lower-case lettering.
Even Tesla’s Elon Musk weighed in on the debate, asking on his X platform: “Do you sell cars?”
However, Jaguar’s Managing Director Rawdon Glover told the Financial Times that the intended message of the campaign had been lost in “a blaze of intolerance” and also denied that it was meant as a “woke” statement.
“This is not a depiction of how we think our future customers are. We don’t want to necessarily leave all of our customers behind. But we do need to attract a new customer base,” Glover told the publication.
Jaguar is going all-electric from 2026 with a new line-up of significantly more expensive cars, and Glover said the campaign intended to move the brand away from traditional automotive stereotypes.
“If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand,” Glover told the Financial Times.
“We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently.”
A few days after releasing the initial rebrand campaign, Jaguar posted a teaser image of its upcoming concept car, which will preview the new design direction of the brand when it debuts at the Miami Art Week on December 2.
From the partial rear angle that the teaser reveals, the car looks every bit as distinctive as the people in the advert. The car, which Jaguar says is “bold, dramatic and fearless,” has a fastback profile and no rear window.
The carmaker describes the new design philosophy as “Exuberant Modernism” and states that it recaptures the ethos of brand founder Sir William Lyons to “copy nothing”.
Ahead of its relaunch in 2026, Jaguar has already discontinued most of its model line-up, with the XE and XF sedans and F-Type sports car having been culled earlier this year, and the E-Pace and I-Pace SUVs set to disappear at the end of 2024.
The aforementioned concept car is expected to spawn a ‘GT’ saloon model in 2026, and the brand is also said to be working on a large SUV to rival the Bentley Bentayga and a flagship sedan that could possibly target the Rolls Royce Ghost.
Its ambitions are certainly bold.
IOL
