10,000+ hours in Strategy, Branding and Persuasive Storytelling. Behavioral Psychology geek. Google for Startups Mentor.
Once upon a time, I had the pleasure of leading the Jaguar brand in the Israeli market. Here’s my take on the hyped rebranding. Yes, like many, I think it’s horrible. But this is not because of the logo with the capital G in the middle, or the desperate attempt to look modern. It’s because of how our brains perceive brands. Our brains perceive brands with the same circuits they use for humans. If we see a person for the first time, we tend to accept their persona as is. But if a familiar persona tries to change its style, suddenly and dramatically, we call bullshit. Jaguar’s persona is one of an accomplished and sophisticated English gentleman with heritage and tradition. One with a unique edge of seductiveness, extreme efficiency, and coolness. Just like James Bond (no wonder the two brands have cooperated for decades). Introducing the new branding is like turning James Bond into a millennial hipster. Would you pay to see that movie? It’s not that brands cannot change. Just like humans, they can evolve. What they cannot do is become the complete opposite of who they are. But don’t worry about Jaguar, they will get it very soon. The sales will drop, the CEO will be fired, an apology will be issued, and the brand will return to its roots. A bit shaken but not stirred. #Jaguar #advertising #branding #brands #strategicnarratives
I couldn’t disagree more. I road around in Waymo all week, which are all Jaguar. I felt the new branding inside these vehicles more than I felt the past. Brands evolve and can be successful. I felt it and millions more will too. For anyone in the industry that claims to be experts in branding and can’t see what has been done here, you will be either be admitting you were wrong soon enough, or holding onto a failed stance forever.
Getting really fed up with everyone confusing Jaguar with Aston Martin. This neatly demonstrates the problem. Bentley image? From James Bond books. Aston image? From James Bond movies. Jaguar? A cheap brand borrowing Aston Martin’s image? That has already proved a route to failure. I really like your persona image because the image on the right shows the authentic Daniel Craig. He’s not playing a part- and perhaps that shows true modern British values. Seems to align positively with “new” Jaguar.
I find it extremely amusing how marketers are jumping on the negative feedback bandwagon. There is a sense of "oh no, you touched a sacred brand". That sacred brand stopped giving returns a while ago. It's all nice and good pretending. Reality is more complex. Will this rebranding work to reposition the brand to work with a completely different yet still spend-capable audience? Time will tell. Overall, it's intriguing. And talked about like it rarely happens. All earned media to reach a new audience who sees that type of thing as attractive. Yeah. You're all mad the brand doesn't care about talking to you, and like children you folks complain, complain, complain... (That said, the meme made me LOL)
There is a Freudian notion in psychology called patricide about only when killing your father you can move ahead… this isn’t necessarily bs, it’s about killing the legacy to claim a new kingdom… they will leverage the killing the old to build a new, something that by simply creating a new brand you couldn’t achieve… and anyways, they were a dying brand anyways, so they needed a radical move
Jaguar sales were in free fall. They had to grab attention and change. Now everyone is talking how terrible the rebranding was but when they launch the new car everyone is curious to see it. And if it's awesome nobody cares about the rebranding anymore. Remains to be seen how awesome the new car is. They didn't have much option but to shake their foundation to become relevant again. The world has changed, you can't advertise your products to posh white men only.
I think you’re wrong about the conclusions. The LR bit of JLR is plenty successful, so I suspect that if this doesn’t work, they will simply give up on Jaguar and become LR instead of JLR…
This is making the assumption that people are familiar with the old Jaguar brand persona. What if this new rebrand is the first time you become aware of the brand. It’s also difficult to cite a potential drop in sales as a trigger for a backpedal though, given their sales will effectively be zero during this transition time.
I recall when Lindsay Lohan was set to become fashion director at the famed French couture house of Ungaro. The press and public were "flabbergasted" and believed the whole affair to be next level "cringe". Oh, it was, but what the public and even the industry missed was that Ungaro played the long con game. They raised their Q-score by leaps and bounds and sold out of their accessories and leather goods to all new retail houses, Bloomingdale's, etc. Sure, no one bought the RTW, but the margins are in the accessories. What seemed like a fail, was actually a big win for Ungaro. Where no one was paying attention, now they were, and the brand elevated above the noise to be noticed again.
Old Logo : Brand Image of Product which is known for New Logo : Brand Name Image with Diversity, Equality, Inclusion for NEW Product
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3wYonatan Kagansky ✱ I remember conversations with the late President of Jaguar Land Rover in Poland. Already then, Jaguar was struggling with the conservative image of a British lord. Ford couldn't cope with it. In 2015, while working at Dentsu, I came across Brief Jaguar, which was a mess in desperation for help in changing its image. The British world is attractive only in Great Britain. It is losing its attractiveness outside Great Britain. Today, rebranding is another attempt to hide its Britishness and smuggle in universal values to save the brand from collapse. Will TATA Motors cope with this challenge? They have also been struggling for years to be a rival to BMW and Audi, but nothing is working out at the moment