The boss of Jaguar has defended the company’s move away from “traditional automotive stereotypes” after a clip of its new advert was met with a barrage of “vile hatred and intolerance” online.
This week, Jaguar Land Rover, the luxury UK carmaker owned by India’s Tata Motors, posted a 30-second clip on X featuring models in brightly coloured clothing set against equally vibrant backdrops, without a car or the company’s traditional cat logo.
“If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand,” Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover told the Financial Times of the company’s “copy nothing” campaign.
The new ad and rebrand prompted a backlash with more than 100,000 comments, including from the platform’s chief executive, Elon Musk who responded: “Do you sell cars?”
In response, Glover said, “Yes. We’d love to show you”, and invited Musk for a cuppa in Miami next month where the company is presenting a public installation for the rebrand at Miami art week.
Glover told the FT that while the response to the new campaign, which drew more than 160m views on social media, had been “very positive” he said he was disappointed by the “vile hatred and intolerance” in the comments towards those featured in the video.
“This is a reimagining that recaptures the essence of Jaguar, returning it to the values that once made it so loved, but making it relevant for a contemporary audience,” said Jaguar’s chief creative officer, Gerry McGovern.
Britain’s largest automotive employer – officially known as JLR – while slower than its rivals to embrace electric vehicles, has made recent investments to build hybrid cars and prepare for electric vehicle production starting with the first deliveries of the electric Range Rover, made in its main factory in Solihull, in the West Midlands, at the end of next year.
James Ramsden, the executive creative director at London design agency Coley Porter Bell, said the rebrand was a “radical reinvention” of a business wanting to appeal to a new generation.
“It’s just a shame it walked away from some of the iconic, treasured, and beautiful icons that have occupied the brand’s DNA for generations,” Ramsden told Adweek. “If you’re going to ‘break the mould’, you’d better have one hell of a range of cars full of innovations and shape language, with a new buyer experience, ready to roll … this we wait to see.”
