Firstly – it’s really too early to judge. We haven’t seen the product yet.
Yes folks, as a marketer – I have to admit to it. The most important P of marketing is product.
The general and marketing press is full of the fact that Jaguar's sales are down 98% or something as a result of the 're-brand'. This is of course nonsense. It is because Jaguar stopped production, closed dealers and stopped selling cars at all because they are re-booting.
The Internet had a meltdown yes over their campaign last November sure. But perhaps the publicity will actually work for Jaguar (or should that be JaGuar?) in the longer run.
The rebrand and promotional video caused notable petrolhead Chris Harris of TopGear fame to call his car-mates together on the night of the rebrand for an ‘emergency podcast’. Well worth listening to actually.
So despite the panic, in commenting on the Jaguar ‘rebrand’, that is all we are commenting on to date. So far, what is revealed is a new identity (OK, that is a big deal – but not as big as a completely new product range) and a teaser video. The new brand identity is a surprise true, and the video an even bigger surprise given the brand’s values, personality and buyer profile.
But if I was Jaguar, I wouldn’t be worried about the “where are the cars?” challenges on social media. At this stage, they want people to be asking that question. But I would be worried about the overall reaction. And more importantly having (deliberately I would say – bear with me) caused the complete self-immolation of my brand. I’m not sure that’s ever been done before. Currently on X they have been seriously ‘ratioed’. i.e. their post has 25m views, just 14k likes and 42k comments – almost universally not just a bit negative but openly derisory. Their community moderator is seen putting a brave face on it, firing back in defence for a couple of hours but eventually running out of ripostes.
On Instagram, they have wiped the slate clean. There is only one post and the new logo. But what they have retained is 17m followers. So perhaps we need new terminology. This isn’t a rebrand but a reset. A Ctrl-Alt-Delete? It is also fair to ask (as Chris Harris does): If you have eradicated everything from your brand’s past, and currently have no products, what is your brand? and what are your 17m followers following? And should you keep them? I don’t think they will. They will need replacing. Jaguar will know this.
In truth the brand has been struggling for a while. Their range has been a patchwork of a solitary (quite lovely, but not-quite-an-E-Type) sportscar, some big ICE saloons and an SUV, all now already retired. As a range it had nothing of the coherence or completeness of its German competitors BMW, Audi or Mercedes. Nor the sales. This is the root problem. This hell-raising rebrand is the response.
It’s their performance in the marketplace that has painted them into a corner. What did Jaguar consist of? Currently no vehicles. A heritage of building lightweight, innovative and quite unique sportscars and sporty saloon cars (sedans). Everything from the silky-smooth straight-six engines, the hand-beaten aluminium bodywork and sleek curved lines of their early cars spoke of a distinct product and innovative engineering. And beauty. In probably the most honest and self-effacing statement in brand history, Enzo Ferrari no less, described the E-Type Jaguar as “The most beautiful car in the world”. And quintessentially British.
But they ran out of road. When historians examine the demise (I really hope they won’t) of Jaguar it is this that they will point at rather than an ephemeral and poorly-judged teaser video. I have often written about the failure to progress a brand. Because to me the brand is the business and not just the identity, the biggest failure to progress a brand is the failure to move your product with the times. Jaguar should probably really have found its sweet spot as the British Porsche. In the 1950s and 60s, and well into the eighties, the brands competed with each other on road and track. Jaguar also successfully expanded their brand values into saloon cars long before Porsche did. However, in the latter half of their brand life, while Porsche continued to expand out from a single product platform (the 911) while evolving the look of the product and brand, Jaguar wavered, producing a patchwork of products which eventually just seemed to peter out in 2023. This created a hiatus. Reading their own runes, and taking the threat to ban ICE cars forever by self-flagellating western governments (a threat I was always certain would be reversed) they decided to reboot as a luxury EV saloon car brand.
Harley Davidson created a comparable crisis for themselves by failing to bring new blood to the brand. In failing to progress the brand they eventually faced an existential crisis. They responded by making the leap to creating an electric bike called Livewire targeted at Millennials and (have effectively) decided to let the old brand die. Triumph motorcycles by comparison, has constantly progressed their brand with exciting new products since being reborn in the nineties, and went through a period of lowering the average age of their buyers.
The Jaguar brand strategy feels horribly similar to Harley Davidson’s. They have discarded their heritage and their fan base. They will have to find a lot of new fans for the new brand.
No German car brand has ever got themselves into this situation. Now JLR has to get Jaguar out. Denied the opportunity of continuity, evolution and brand progression they have to do something bold and different. Once committed to the luxury EV saloon strategy they will have realised that they were starting over. Next to nothing of the brand heritage would remain or be brought forward into the new products.
This ‘cri de cœur’ of an existing Jaguar fan is probably more on the money than its writer actually realises.
This explains the otherwise mysterious claim made by JLR boss Gerry McGovern when he said that there was “No equity whatsoever” in the Jaguar brand. This is manifestly untrue. They could have sold the name to a Chinese buyer I’m sure. Not only did the brand literally have ‘equity’ – financial value – but it had a storied heritage and millions of owners and brand fans.
What he really meant was that the branded business Jaguar was being killed and that the brand name was to be re-applied to a new range of products. They would destroy the equity. This is why they haven’t really minded alienating their current buyers and brand fans. They aren’t interested in them because they only expect a marginal sliver of interest from those people in their new products. (Just as a Harley ‘Bro would never be seen dead on a Livewire). These people will feel sore, because they were invested in the brand and have been dismissed and abandoned. They have been. It is a sacrifice Jaguar probably didn’t want to – but believes it has to – make.
As such is there really a lot of difference between JLR taking the Jaguar brand name and applying it to new products, and the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation buying the storied British MG car brand in 2007 and applying it to a range of cheap EV SUVs?
That does still leaves the utter madness of the teaser video. If JLR were deliberately sending a message to alienate and infuriate Jaguar brand fans, why would they do that? Maybe they thought it better to shock them into never looking at the brand again. Or was it serious? They honestly believe that it represents the new brand philosophy. If so, then it manifestly doesn’t. How could it? Either way, whatever it was designed to do, they will come to regret it.
I really, really hope that the products are what Jaguar are promising. Maybe the world will love them. I sincerely hope so, because the only worse thing than the legendary Jaguar brand becoming something that brings nothing of its heritage forward, is a Jaguar brand that fails completely.
Posted 4 July 2025 by Chris Bullick