Jaguar’s biggest problem is not a new ad

If you spent time on LinkedIn last week, your feed fiiled with comments about Jaguar’s ad and design change.

They ranged from “Oh fuck, Jaguar, what have you done?” to proclamations that marketers shouldn’t be so harsh for a brand trying to be bold.

Many marketers hedged their bets, saying they weren’t fans, but they didn’t want to rush to judgment until they saw the products.

But I don’t need to wait to see the product.

Comments coming from leaders at Jaguar make it obvious that the Jaguar “rebrand” will miss the mark.

Here are six reasons why:

1. There Is No Customer Insight

Jaguar’s Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern offered this insight into the redesign:

“New Jaguar is a brand built around Exuberant Modernism. It is imaginative, bold and artistic at every touchpoint. It is unique and fearless.”

It’s a word salad that is obviously the byproduct of some executive’s boardroom fever dream.

Nothing about the customer. Nothing about what the customer wants.

These are just fluffy design words likely pulled from a vision board.

And their Managing Director Rawdon Glover said they expect to lose 85-90% of their customers.

This is all about some imaginary future customer Jaguar hopes to win through vague language.

And it’s a trap brands constantly fall into: building some imaginary customer profile in a boardroom and then trying to manifest that reality.

Real insights start with real customers.

Jaguar didn’t bother.

They’re betting the company on hypothetical people they dreamt up.

2. What Matters to Employees Doesn’t Matter to Customers

Jaguar needed a change.

Their sales were taking.

The ad works perfectly fine as a piece of employee branding, rallying them around a new vision for the company.

But Jaguar makes the mistake that customers care about the same thing employees do.

An inclusive culture should be lauded.

But it’s not going to make people shell out money for a car that will start at $125,000 in most markets.

Despite what Simon Sinek claims, customers don’t care about the same things employees do.

And they shouldn’t.

Any brand that thinks customers should care about the same thing lives in a pipedream disconnected from their customers.

3. It’s Obnoxious

Jaguar believes it’s going to start some revolution.

At a recent talk, their Director of Jaguar UK Santino Pietrosanti said, “And we’re not just talking about new cars, we are talking about all new ways of thinking and embracing the full spectrum of human potential and creativity.”

And the image in the ad of the blonde person in an orange outfit holding a hammer is an obvious nod to Apple’s 1984 ad with a blonde Anya Major dressed in orange shorts throwing a hammer at the screen.

Dreaming big is great.

But trying to pretend you’re ushering in a revolution through words and references to something that did usher in a revolution is obnoxious.

There’s nothing relatable.

It’s the type of thinking that gets tossed around when companies ignore customers.

4. It’s Just Not Cool

Jaguar really wants to be seen as the cool new car on the block.

It’s why they’re revealing their concept car at Art Basel next week.

But Art Basel is about as cool as Burning Man these days.

It’s where rich people go to be cool. Not where cool really exists.

And when you’re cool, you don’t need to explain why you’re cool.

But Jaguar had to do just that and explain why their new design was cool, hip, and important in a press release.

Here’s just one piece from it:

“Jaguar’s new device mark is its signature. It is a powerful celebration of modernism – geometric form, symmetry and simplicity – demonstrating the unexpected by seamlessly blending upper and lowercase characters in visual harmony.”

Trying hard to fit in doesn’t make your brand cool.

5. The Timeline Ignores the Speed of Change

Jaguar is only revealing a concept car next week.

And how often do concept cars resemble reality?

Jaguar is ending production of its current model early next year.

New vehicles won’t be ready till Summer 2026.

That’s a really long time to attempt to keep a new design working.

Things change fast. Attention is fleeting.

What matters today can be insignificant tomorrow.

Thinking people will still care about something a year and a half from now shows a deep disconnect with the speed of culture.

And what will they do, keep reinforcing ideas that don’t exist?

That’s a recipe for becoming the brand that cried Jaguar and annoying customers.

Jaguar should have paid attention to the timeline of the 1984 ad they referenced: the Macintosh released two days later.

6. Customers Don’t Forget the Past

In 1989, Infiniti tried to sell their new Q45 through feeling.

It didn’t work.

And they had it easier: they weren’t fighting against existing perceptions.

Jaguar’s sales death came from reliability, production, and market mismatch issues.

All things related to failing to deliver on its promise as a vehicle.

Focusing attention away from it being what it is (a vehicle) isn’t going to make people forget about the perceptions they already have.

A new campaign and look don’t change decades of customer associations.

And their new higher price point won’t help allay fears.

Its issues stemmed from its failure to deliver quality for the price it charged.

The Managing Director Rawdon Glover even admits the reliability issue is responsible for the long delay: “The worst thing we could possibly do is push a car to market before we were utterly confident in everything from software to battery to chassis to whatever else. We’re aiming for 2026, but if it’s not, then it’ll be there when it’s ready.”

When your biggest issue is a perception of reliability as a vehicle, you shouldn’t try to make potential customers care about something else.

Getting them to pay attention to something else doesn’t make memories vanish.

They’re not stupid.

We’re Just Not That Into You

All of Jaguar’s issues stem from being too into itself.

And not into its customers.

The whole thing comes off like a company trying to shout so loudly that customers will forget about Jaguar’s past, forget about their needs as vehicle buyers, and start caring about what’s important to Jaguar’s executives.

That’s happened with every failed rebrand.

It happens every day in companies struggling to get customers to buy.

And there’s nothing revolutionary about that.