Jaguar - marketing disaster, or stroke of genius?

Jaguar has caused quite the fuss with its recent rebrand. It also appears to be treading a very thin line between a marketing disaster and marketing genius.

It would be fair to say the rebrand has caused a lot of outrage. But here’s the thing - a lot of the outrage has come from the exact demographic that Jaguar can no longer afford to focus its brand on. I’ve seen it covered across major national news outlets, furiously debated on every social platform I use, and Elon Musk is asking them questions on X, formerly Twitter. Someone has even gone as far as setting up a petition to get Jaguar to revert to its original branding (yes, really). At the time of writing this, the video Jaguar posted has over 23 million views on X alone, which is quite incredible in little over 24 hours. But it does beg the question - is it good marketing?

A lot of people on social media will very aggressively tell you that it isn’t, but I disagree. I’ve always disliked phrases such as “all publicity is good publicity” and “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” Anyone that’s ever worked on some form of crisis will very swiftly tell you those phrases are untrue. However, in some cases such as this one, a not-too-dissimilar approach can be effective. I say this because everyone is talking about the brand before they’ve even seen a glimpse of the product. If you are selling a product, then of course you don’t want to alienate or thoroughly wind up your audience. But as of now, we are yet to see an actual car - so this advert is about brand positioning as opposed to selling, and has massively increased anticipation for when it’s launched.

Millions of people are going to be paying attention to the new product.

Personally, I don’t love the video; it’s full of buzzwords, uncharacteristic visuals and new branding that isn’t ‘very Jag.’ But it’s not meant to be, that’s the point. Jaguar has tried to reinvent itself before, and has always played on its heritage, whilst trying to be the British answer to the BMW.

Sales figures will tell you this just hasn’t worked with only 67,000 vehicles sold last year and sales of new cars now coming to a halt. This begs the question of why would you continue down the same, unsuccessful path? After all, stupidity can be defined by doing the same things over and over again but expecting different results.

Jaguar has found itself in need to make a bold move and if you are going to reinvent your brand, why not go all out? Especially when you have the financial backing of a group such as Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) behind you.

I don’t like marketing strategies or campaigns that cause controversy solely for the sake of controversy, or purely to gain cheap engagement. But I don’t believe this is what Jaguar has done. It has done something completely new for the brand, attracted a lot of attention, and ensured many more pairs of eyes will be on its new products when they are revealed.

It’s brave, it’s ambitious and it’s a little bit insane. To be clear - it could also be a catastrophic failure. But I have full admiration for utilising this strategy and getting so many people talking about it.

It’s been really interesting to see the differing views of others in the marketing and PR industry. It’s easy to get caught up in marketing tropes and cliches, and it's always going to irk people when, after being told to “push the boundaries,” you actually do. But to kick up such a stir before a product has even been revealed, it’s safe to say that if I was behind it I’d be heading to the pub to celebrate a job well done.