The architect behind the Jaguar rebranding that
literally caused mouths to drop has taken to the airwaves to explain the thinking behind it.
Former Jaguar Land Rover Chief Creative Officer Gerry McGovern defends the
direction the brand took with a new logo for Jaguar and a marketing campaign featuring a new brand identity with the theme "Copy Nothing," reports
Marketing Daily. The effort was awarded "Best Electric Campaign"
by MediaPost last March.
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“With that film, it got taken out of context,” McGovern told Autocar’s
My Week in Cars podcast. “What we were saying is, we want Jaguar to be a copy of nothing. That’s why you saw all these people who look like a copy of nothing. And then that was related
to other, different types of communication that nobody got to see.”
The campaign’s goal was to reposition Jaguar as an electric-only luxury brand priced akin to
Bentley and Rolls-Royce, according to The Street. “What it produced instead was a culture-war
fight the company was not staffed to win.”
There was internal resistance to the change.
“Roughly 25 to 30 Jaguar staffers signed a letter
objecting to the decision to outsource the identity work, months before the damage
showed up in a single filing,” according to The Street. "The public damage compounded from there. Jaguar’s Paris Fashion Week appearance drew another round of enthusiast anger nearly a year after the
launch, which tells you the reputational hit did not decay on the normal news-cycle schedule. Most brand controversies fade in six weeks. This one got re-litigated every time the company showed up
anywhere.”
The backlash forced JLR to revise its communication plans which is just as well since the vehicles have been delayed.
“Jaguar is
undergoing an almost total reinvention,” notes CarExpert.
“Jaguar progressively ended production of all of its existing models between 2024 and 2025, with the production version of the Type 00, now rechristened Type 01, to be the first of a new,
smaller range of more expensive vehicles.”
It is scheduled to be revealed on Oct. 6.
“The Jaguar relaunch was McGovern’s last project after more
than 20 years at JLR, where he was responsible for designing enduring models including the Range Rover Evoque, Land Rover Defender and two generations of the Range Rover,” according to Automotive News. “He stepped down in March to set up his own creative consultancy."
