If there’s one charitable thing to say about Jaguar’s new brand campaign, it’s that people are, at least, finally talking about the ailing UK carmaker again. A new spot on X that aired on social media on Tuesday has already gone viral — and not in a good way, with more than 22 million views.
The 30-second ad features a number of ethnically diverse and largely gender-fluid models dressed in matching androgynous clothing against loud hues, promising that Jaguar will “break the moulds”, “typical will delete” and “will not copy anything”.
With no car in sight, Jaguar Land Rover’s chief creative officer, Gary McGovern, was forced to promise reporters that his team “were not smelling the white stuff” when they came up with it.
Jaguar’s reboot, complete with Postmodern aesthetics and logos come from a completely new. EV-only lineup coming in 2026.
This is likely a last-ditch effort to save the once-venerable automaker.
Annual sales for the fiscal year to March 2024 were just 67,000 vehicles, less than the 115,000 units sold by the Land Rover brand with its rugged Defender SUV model alone.
In the first half of fiscal 2025, Jaguar sales fell 40 percent to about 14,000 cars, just 8 percent of Jaguar Land Rover’s volume.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Jaguar’s managing director, Roden Glove, spoke of his marque in a statement as if it were already in a coma, if not dead.
Acknowledging the reality of his declining relevance, Glove said he doesn’t have the luxury of being timid.
“To bring back such an iconic brand globally, we had to be fearless,” he said of the campaign on Tuesday, calling it a “total reset.”
The unveiling of its Design Vision concept on December 2 during Miami Art Week will give the first taste of what’s to come for the “New Jaguar.”
Kasturi mocks the online brand campaign.
The problem is that to be effective, brand campaigns need to deliver on their promise with real products that live up to the claims.
And at this point, Jaguar has little to show for itself.
Last week it stopped selling new cars in its home UK market, and other markets will eventually follow suit as it ditches the last vestiges of its combustion engine past.
So everything is riding on his upcoming event early next month.
Courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover
But its recent history doesn’t exactly suggest that Jaguar will “break the truth.”
Hence, the ad was widely mocked online.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk asked sarcastically, “Do you sell cars?” While others scoffed at what seemed to be a message of diversity, equality, and inclusion—now out of fashion in the United States.
One user on X summed up the place as “when you walk into the elevator and the whole DEI department is there.”
Executives are now left wondering whether all this free publicity will help or hurt its brand repositioning.
good luck Jaguar has been contacted for a statement on the reception of the venue but has yet to receive a response.
Jaguar’s long descent is irrelevant.
Best known for its classic E-type coupe of the 1960s, which enhanced the styling with its distinctive long bonnet, Jaguar never really recovered from its disastrous period under Ford.
During the American automaker’s ownership, the brand was hollowed out from within by mass market cars like the X-Type.
It became one of the worst examples of the sedan. seeds Engineering: Underneath, it was a stripped-down version of the Ford Mondeo with a bit of Jaguar styling and logo slapped on top, A monster that eroded its brand equity and scared off loyal fans.
Under its current owner Tata Motors, which bought Jaguar and Land Rover in a packaged deal sixteen years ago, the British carmaker has attempted a revival.
Jaguar launched the F-Pace-like SUV for the first time in its history and briefly won industry acclaim with its I-Pace electric crossover, but the damage was already done.
A rebirth nearly four years in the planning
Now as part of the reboot the entire range of execs that cleared the first one is mapped under a completely different landscape.
In February 2021, during the height of the EV bubble, Thierry Bolloré, then head of Tata’s Jaguar Land Rover division, unveiled his “Reimagine” plan, which would see Jaguar transition to an EV-only lineup after four years. It will be seen.
At the time, it seemed like an obvious move, as EVs seemed well-positioned to replace combustion engine cars.
The clean, quiet propulsion technology is seen as better performance than gas cars, with smoother, faster acceleration minus the pollutant-laden clouds of smoke from the tailpipes.
This proved overly optimistic, though, as EV adoption in Western markets is slowing.
Even now pioneer Tesla doesn’t bother to sell investors on the technology, which Musk calls “real-world AI”: the focus of its messages for autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots.
But JLR still needs EVs to meet CO2 regulatory compliance in order to continue selling heavy, thirsty, yet relatively profitable, Land Rover SUVs across Europe.
And there is reason to believe that he may have some success with this approach.
Next year sees a phase-out of new fleet emissions targets for automakers in the European Union that will require an even larger proportion of EVs in the manufacturers’ sales mix.
By the time Jaguar’s first EV arrives, the technology may have finally become mainstream in Europe.
However, whether buyers want the kind of car it plans to unveil next month is another matter. For the moment, though, his boss is optimistic.
“I’m excited for the world to finally see Jaguar,” said Glover.
