Jaguar’s psychedelic rebrand launch

The internet has been in a tizzy this week about Jaguar’s rebrand featuring a bizarre video and confounding logo update, but so far no car. We’ll take a look at what Jaguar released online this week, and then take a look back at how Jaguar arrived at a point where such seemingly reckless stunts were deemed necessary.

Why is Jaguary doing this?

It starts with the reality that Jaguar have spent most of the last decade in a state of confusion, with plummeting sales and rudderless product management, evident in a series of costly and brutal shifts. First, the 2021 announcent that they’d soon become and EV-0nly brand. Then, last-minute cancellation of a nearly $1 billion vehicle program. And finally, a decision to move up-market, from mainstream premium pricing to high-end luxury segments where prices run $100,000 and up.

Now, with barely a pulse remaining, they did what they had to do to grab our attention: They served up this shocking, incomprehensible, and widely scorned hype video, as well as a new logotype that feels completely detached from Jaguar’s enviable heritage.

The New Logo

While I am not a fan of this logo – which aestheticlly seems to offering upstart, youthful, and fast-fashion aesthetic ideals rather than something related to one of the most legendary automobile marques of the last century – I am less disturbed by the mixed-capitalization than by the fact that it bears no relationship to anything Jaguar has represented or offered in its history.

Jaguars have always been fancy. Their leaping-cat icon and all-caps, bold, progressive typeface were clearly expressions of the brand DNA. The new logo is fancy only because it is rendered in a golden color. But otherwise, it feels simplistic, faux-futuristic, and poorly resolved. The only bit of cleverness that I see is the mirrored shapes of the J and R. Sorry, r (lower case). Ugh.

Of note, the brand “launch” featured no vehicle. No sketch, no silhouette, no spy shot, and certainly no actual production vehicle. It was just an announcement. One that made no sense.

What message does the oddball video send?

Let’s take a closer look at some stills from the Technicolor video, filmed in a series of cheaply staged studio settings which looked alternately zany, amateurish, and alien.

“Create Exuberant”

First of all, there is nothing exuberant to be seen. The colors are outrageous and bright, perhaps. But the facial expressions are somber if not saddening. The outfits are silly but only in their campy pretentiousness. The models’ gaits are stiff and uncomfortable. Do you feel exuberant when you see this? Or do you feel like looking away?

“Live Vivid”

This, I suppose, is the closest they get to connecting the slogan to the image. The colors are vivid, no doubt. But the model’s expression is blank. Her clothes are impractical. The setting, while bright and colorful, is stark and devoid of life. Ugh.

“Delete Ordinary”

Probably my least favorite bit of the video. An old man with a paintbrush, spinning around. Like all the other models, an awful hairstyle. And of course, rather than deleting anything, he slaps a poorly-painted brushstroke over the screen text. Is he on a mission to change the past? Do we have any sense of what this “painter” might create? No. Just this too-serious shot of a possibly angry fellow spinning like an idiot. Cheerio.

“Copy Nothing”

And then, of course, the awful new tagline: Copy Nothing. First of all, despite their oddball styling, all the mannequins, I mean models, all fit the same mould: impractical monotone outfits, blank stares, over-styled coifs, and bad makeup. What we definitely will not be copying is anything in this video.

Why Now?

Jaguar needs a fresh start, no doubt. Once a glamorous and highly sought-after car, Jaguar has faded into irrelevance, its only toehold in America being its use by Waymo for their fully autonomous fleet now seen on the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin, Texas.

Branding is an art, not a science. For all of my adult life, Jaguar has been fighting an uphill battle to compete with the German big 3, and to define itself in a compelling way that leveraged its glorious past yet still felt relevant to a new generation of buyers. First saddled with aging and outdated models, then battling insolvency, later purchased by Ford who attempted to grow Jaguar’s market by badge-engineering a compact sedan based on Ford Mondeo bits, and finally saved (we thought) by Indian industrial conglomerate Tata, it has most recently been on a years-long losing streak. After peaking in 2018, Jaguar sales have seen dramatic declines, totaling just 57,000 last year and supposedly on a similar pace this year.