Bright pink color, a new typeface, and a missing cat in its emblem – Jaguar’s rebrand campaign has been the talk of the town since its launch. It certainly divides opinions for a car maker with a rich history of nearly 100 years.
How do you decide if a marketing campaign is an absolute hit? Of course, if it gets the world talking about you, it must be a hit, right? But what if the world is collectively mocking you? But hey, bad PR is still PR, eh? So it’s safe to say that the metrics which decide if a marketing campaign is a hit or a miss are, after all, subjective.
During Miami Art Week earlier this month, Jaguar debuted its daring rebrand alongside the Type 00 concept car. The focal point of the event was its new "Copy Nothing" revamp, which brought bold fashion and vibrant aesthetics to usher in a new age before going all-electric.
Jaguar intends to completely transition away from internal combustion engines, and adopt a new design and technology philosophy in order to become an all-electric premium brand by 2025. The brand's identity is being completely redefined as part of this makeover, which goes beyond simple electrification.
I have to say, Jaguar's redesign has done more for the company than any other in recent memory. After all, it got people talking about Jaguar, at the very least. Jaguar’s managing director Rawdon Glover said, "If we play the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand."
While it did get the world talking about Jaguar, the move was widely criticized, with some claiming it was damaging the brand's legacy and others complaining that Jaguar had not actually displayed a car – which was the whole crux of this campaign.
You have to understand that car badges are more than merely ornamental accessories. They impact people's decisions to buy the vehicles.
According to recent data, daily sales of Jaguar have reportedly decreased by 9% since the British brand's controversial rebranding earlier this month. Marketcheck UK data shows that in the seven days after Jaguar's "Copy Nothing" rebranding on November 19, the average number of used Jaguars sold per day was just 133. By contrast, used Jaguar sales averaged 146 at the beginning of November, representing an 8.9% discrepancy.
Leaving the sales and the car in question aside, let’s put our focus on the rebrand itself. Now it’s not every day you see a historical brand commit to a full-scale rebrand. From the logo to colors, and even the company vision – Jaguar’s rebranding is more than just a madman’s marketing campaign.
Jaguar was criticized by certain X users for being "woke" and deviating from its typical demographic. Lulu Cheng Meservey, co-founder of Rostra PR group, called the rebrand "disastrous," saying "It's possible a marketing exec read too many think pieces about how millennials shop based on values and forgot that people want cars that are really well built."
For me, personally, the core message has been lost as a result of the campaign’s direction, which has alienated its older core audience. And why the company wishes to undermine its core clientele is beyond me. Alright, if you feel you are losing out on a certain group, strive to win them over, but not at the expense of others.
From a business perspective, it's ludicrous to be so polarizing and ignore your main client base. The whole rebrand campaign appears to be a well-made fashion concept with juvenile taglines that have no real substance for a car manufacturer. I’m not half as offended by the quirky colors as I am with Jaguar for not presenting itself as a carmaker first and as a luxury brand second.
But it’s important to understand why Jag opted for a rebrand. The company has been experiencing a steep decline in sales – less than 67,000 Jaguar vehicles were sold globally last year, which is almost half of the total sales during the fiscal year that coincided with the onset of COVID. Per Car and Driver, there are currently only 122 Jaguar dealerships in the United States, a sharp decrease from a peak of about 200.
So, it’s easy to see how perfectly Jaguar's rebranding initiative aligns with the company's major product transition. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Jaguar declared it was "not afraid to polarize."
It's not like the company didn't know it would lose a major chunk of itds existing customer base. "We anticipate that 10 to 15 percent of our current Jaguar customers will follow us," Glover stated in an interview earlier this year.
So, I come back to where I started – it's tough to say if Jag's rebrand campaign was a hit or a miss. You can't deny that the campaign can be seen as a huge success if all that the company wanted to do was to get people talking about it – without even releasing any cars yet.
Controversy is a weird thing. It certainly gets you headlines. If you’re Jaguar and that’s all that you wanted, bravo.
Source: Jaguar
