The Pride of Lyons:  John Underwood, Executive Director at Freshwater takes a closer look at Jaguar’s rebrand

We tend to reach for the old adage that “no news is good news” when we are waiting nervously for the outcome of an important event.  The result of grandad’s operation, the call from a teenager with those crucial exam results, the response from the estate agent concerning our low offer for the house we want to buy.

The alternative view is best summarised by the phrase beloved of PR professionals, “I don’t care what you say about me as long as you spell my name right.” This suggests the exact opposite, namely that all news is good news, even bad news is good news, provided it raises the profile of my brand.

As they consider the media coverage of the last week or so, the top management team at the luxury Jaguar car company must be licking their lips with delight at the coverage their new brand launch has achieved. Acres of traditional media coverage, a social media avalanche and some visual imagery that everybody’s talking about. If you’ve missed it, by the way, you must have spent the past few days on the International Space Station.

The relaunch showcases a group of people from a wide variety of ethnic groups, dressed in a range of blindingly bright and colourful costumes. They are out to intrigue you with a dose of exuberant modernism. The big theme is “copy nothing”, the marketing equivalent of the political slogan “it’s time for change”. And shock, horror this new brand launch from the Jaguar car company had absolutely no car in it!

The motoring press was largely unimpressed.  Every rent-a-columnist in what used to be known as Fleet Street had a view, and even Elon Musk and Nigel Farage waded into the debate. Most commentators were critical.  Jaguar was accused of “going woke” and Mr Farage even predicted the company would go bust.

So, what is Jaguar up to? Put simply it is dumping out on the internal combustion engine and retooling its factory to produce and sell only electric Jaguars from 2026. And here is the important bit. They have decided that in recent years the kind of people who tend to buy Jaguars are the “gin and Jags” set. Well-to-do baby boomers who have paid off the mortgage, topped up the pension fund and are now enjoying retirement. And what does Jaguar know about this demographic group? Quite simply, they are dying out.

Jaguar wants to shift its sales into a market that’s getting bigger rather than one that’s getting smaller. It wants to attract a new, younger generation of customers and that’s what the new marketing campaign is all about.

It’s called tease marketing, the creation of a mystery narrative in which details are revealed, bit by bit, over a period of time. Trust me, there will be a car, but only when Jaguar has built the excitement and the anticipation to a stratospherically high level.

The “copy nothing” theme supposedly comes from Sir William Lyons, the Jaguar founder. He began the business in 1922 as the Swallow Sidecar company making stylish motorcycle sidecars before shifting a few years later into building luxurious bodies for the extremely basic Austin Seven.

Over the years, Lyons and his successors took Jaguar through a large number of revolutions and rebrands, and the company went through some amazing ups and a number of very serious downs.

When the popular ITV series The Sweeney was launched in 1974, the title sequence included a car chase. In the first series the police were driving a Jaguar. By the second series, they were in a Ford Granada. This summed up all that was wrong with Jaguar in the 1970s. It was a car for bank robbers and barrow boys; respectable people like policemen drove something much more reliable.

But in the years that followed Jaguar became resurgent by focussing on customer satisfaction, shifting to new markets and rebranding. And that’s exactly what Jaguar is doing now. I’ll bet a pound to a penny that Jaguar understands its new target market better than Nigel Farage. So, expect more from Jaguar in the coming days and weeks as the tease marketing campaign unfolds.