Luxury Carmaker Jaguar Launches Rebranding Campaign, Without Cars

Jaguar's new logo. Jaguar/PA

Jaguar, a producer of luxury vehicles that recently announced it is going 100 percent electric, launched a rebranding campaign this week that has garnered much attention, though it remains to be seen whether that will be overall positive or negative. 

Declaring that “a seismic change is coming,” Jaguar posted a video ad on its social media accounts that features men and women in flamboyant yellow, orange, pink, and red attire and makeup, striking fashion poses over statements such as “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” and “delete ordinary.” 

The ad has succeeded in catching the public’s eye. 

“Our brand relaunch for Jaguar is a bold and imaginative reinvention and as expected it has attracted attention and debate,” Ken McConomy, Jaguar’s head of global public relations, told The Epoch Times. 

“As proud custodians at such a remarkable point in Jaguar’s history, we have preserved iconic symbols while taking a dramatic leap forward,” he said. “The brand reveal is only the first step in this exciting new era, and we look forward to sharing more on Jaguar’s transformation in the coming days and weeks.”

Notably absent from Jaguar’s ad, however, are cars. And this has left some viewers scratching their heads.

“Do you sell cars?” Elon Musk, founder of electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla, posted in response. 

Others posted comments like, “Jag’s Bud Light moment,” “I think it’s a new brand of clothes!” and “killed a British icon.”

“Forgive them this advert ... because they made the E-type,” one nostalgic viewer posted, referring to the iconic XK-E sports car model that Jaguar produced between 1961 and 1974, which has featured prominently in movies including “Austin Powers.”

Jaguar has been responding to many of the posts on X, with replies such as, “The story’s still unfolding—stay tuned,” and “This is a renaissance.”

The United Kingdom-based automaker, owned together with Land Rover by India’s Tata Motors since 2008, after previously being purchased by Ford, has struggled with declining sales, and had paused making new cars for a year to reconfigure its production line and shift from gas-powered cars to EVs.

Between 2019 and 2023, Jaguar ended production of its XJ, XF, and XE sedans; F-Type sports cars; I-Pace electric model; and its F-Pace SUV. This was reportedly part of the company’s strategy to exit the mass market and focus solely on luxury electric vehicles.

As part of its “Reimagine” strategy, Jaguar has committed to a fully electric lineup by 2025. The new brand will be built around a concept the company calls “exuberant modernism,” which is “imaginative, bold, and artistic at every touchpoint,” the company stated. The next stage in Jaguar’s transformation will be revealed at Miami Art Week on Dec. 2. 

Numerous critics of Jaguar’s new ad campaign likened it to Bud Light’s 2023 campaign that featured a transgender spokesperson and led to a 28 percent decline in sales over the next three months, according to a Harvard Business Review study. 

Whether Jaguar’s rebranding will have a similar result remains to be seen, given that Jaguar now appears to be targeting its campaign exclusively toward wealthy consumers. But, like Bud Light, Jaguar has been a brand that traditionally appealed to male consumers, and the carmaker’s transition may have other parallels to Bud Light’s campaign, which according to the brewer’s marketing vice president Alissa Heinerscheid sought a more “inclusive” direction away from its “fratty” image.

In October, Santini Pietrosanti, Jaguar’s head of brand strategy, told attendees at the Attitude Awards, an LGBTQ+ event, that his company is “committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and unified culture that is representative not only of the people who use our products but in a society in which we all live.

“We are on a transformative journey of our own, driven by a belief in diversity, inclusion, creativity, policy, and, most importantly, action. We’ve established over 15 DEI groups,” he said, referring to the diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) agenda.