Jaguar’s bizarre rebrand will drive away customers

New Jaguar logo
New Jaguar logo

Credit: Jaguar

It might, I suppose, have been worse. It could have followed the fund manager formerly known as Aberdeen to restyle itself as JGR. Or as with the Royal Mail, it could have opted for something along the lines of International Motoring Services.

Even so, the decision by Jaguar to restyle its branding this week – focusing on an advert full of models but with no car in it – already looks set to join the great marketing flops of all time.

Jaguar has been a company with problems for many years, but through everything, its brand remained incredibly strong. Trashing it is only going to damage the company even further.

The “gin and jag set” were predictably upset. Ahead of its re-launch as a purely electric vehicle marque, it unveiled a new logo that apparently should be written as JaGUar, that “seamlessly blended upper and lower case characters in visual harmony” – whatever the heck that might mean.

And the growling cat that used to so stylishly adorn the bonnet of many of its most classic cars and that has been around since the 1950s has been retired, replaced with a new design embossed on brass.

On social media, the response was scathing, with the classic car crowd – a conservative bunch at the best of times – in meltdown and everyone else left completely bemused. What should have been a punchy launch of its new range of electric vehicles turned instead into an embarrassing damp squib.

An advert for the company, heavy on wacky outfits and aspirational slogans but very light on detail about the actual cars made by the business, has only made matters worse.

There were two big problems with the rebrand. First, transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs) may or may not be the right decision. We can all debate that at the 19th hole. But it doesn’t need to mean abandoning the energy and verve that the Jaguar brand stood for.

One of the secrets of Tesla’s success has been that it understands that EVs still need to be upmarket, desirable cars, unashamed of their speed and power, which you can show off to your friends.

This would surely have been the moment for Jaguar to double down on its heritage. It could have reassured everyone that while the kit under the bonnet might have changed, elsewhere the new range was every bit as stylish as the cars it had been making for the last hundred years.

Instead, it chucked it all in the bin, as if it was something to be embarrassed about instead of celebrated.

Next, it is one thing to play around with the name and logo of an asset manager or an electricity supplier. They are dull, if necessary products, that never set anyone’s pulse racing.

A prestige car is something completely different. It needs to have some serious kerb appeal and the more history it has the better. There is a craze among marketing executives for mucking about with cases and vowels, imagining that everything can be fixed with a few typographical tweaks.

By contrast, the greatest marketers in commercial history recognised that it was a genuine emotional connection with the customer that would guarantee long-term success. It is hard to see much emotion in the drab design that Jaguar has chosen to inflict on us.

The one thing that didn’t need to be fixed at Jaguar was the branding. There have been some dodgy, unreliable vehicles in its line-up over the years and a few indifferent ones. But what kept the customers on board was the symbolism of the logo.

There are going to be a lot of Chinese EVs flooding the market very soon, from companies we have barely heard of but which are making very good cars at very cheap prices.

It was always going to be a struggle for the new Jags to compete with the likes of BYD and Geely as well as Tesla – but with this weak, insipid branding, it may well prove impossible.