As has been said, there are two supremely stupid things about this rebrand:
1. It is boiler-plate plagiarism, under the 'copy nothing' line. It’s like some aging uncle discovering Radiohead or Coldplay, then bopping around in a band t-shirt after growing a hipster beard. The lack of self-awareness is insane. And that geezer in the backrow left! He looks like a kids’ TV presenter with a side-line in serial killing.
2. Its smart-arse 'poke fun at the gammons' back-slapping, akin to a drag-queen in a primary school or Keir Starmer kneeling for BLM. Maybe the ensuing collapse in the brand will seem less amusing?
Because - as with the BBC's desperate attempts to chase the ghastly yuuf or hipster - this excruciating move will fail with everybody. The teenagers behind it seem to think moving into electric-only cars is a smart move, presumably prompted by EV’s plummeting sales and the mass redundancies sweeping European car-makers?
As a proud petrol Jaguar owner, that's me done with them. I'm getting an update on Wednesday to its security system and will check with interest what the staff think of their company’s suicide. The marketing guru behind it will of course be long gone, when they're all facing redundancy.
A typical progressive - selfish, valueless and incapable of anything but destruction (and greed) - moving from this cultural icon:
Jaguar Logo: Meaning, Evolution, and ...
to this piece of shit:
Is this the funniest resignation from the corporate world since Lester Burnham's exit-interview, in American Beauty?
But there's a more analytical view on this, equally as unflattering to these 'woke' corporations. We're not so much living under capitalism as corporatism, with a very hefty state element. The likes of Jaguar are sucking up to this, trying to surf what they see as the state-sponsored diversity religion of 'progressivism'. They're very much invested in it - especially the state's green ideology - whatever the actual views of their owners, management, shareholders and customers.
So somehow, Jaguar (wrongly) saw little choice. What they missed was that Trump would win the US election, and that the power of any state ideology is a foolish thing to embrace. Without doubt, this Jag campaign was planned and created before that election. They gambled on Harris (or at first, Biden) winning. And then it was too late to do anything else but run with the relaunch…
In terms of making money, a corporation may foolishly think its own integrity and historical values are irrelevant. What a paradox! This flaunting of official DEI ‘values’ is signalling the exact opposite: the corporation doesn’t have any. But customers may understand a brand more than its owners do - and often feel affection and ownership, however odd that can seem. As with the Ratner’s debacle of decades ago, such cheap cynicism is the ultimate disaster in terms of sales and even survival. Jaguar has made that especially egregious blunder, signalling its disdain and hatred for the typical Jaguar customer. The classic mistake, a vain hope for some illusory new customer base better aligning with today’s worthless ‘values’.
I wonder if other corporations are now reconsidering things, with Trump returning? Perhaps we’ll see a decline in this insincere DEI signalling.