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Jaguar Drives Its Brand Off A Cliff
The management and marketing geniuses at Jaguar, the iconic car manufacturer, apparently under the impression that the transgender and LGBTQ+ market is enormous, have just released a commercial that they feel will bring thousands if not millions of new buyers to their brand. Perhaps these marketing geniuses were impressed with the self-immolation marketing effort of Bud Light linking their brand to Dylan Mulvaney. They could have also been influenced by any number of other advertisers like Gillette, Target, and others who have embraced the LGBTQ+ community in hopes of increasing sales and market share.
Or perhaps they’re actually nitwits who didn’t detect the shift in the zeitgeist that is rejecting the militant trans and LGBTQ+ agenda, as evidenced in the effectiveness of one of the Trump campaign’s last commercials that excoriated Kamala Harris for supporting the trans agenda. Yes, of course, this brilliant Jaguar campaign may have been in the works for several months, so the marketing team may have happily plowed ahead thinking that they were achieving something brilliant for the brand. Is the marketing calculation that heterosexual men who comprise most of the Jaguar target market and who desire a sports car, an SUV, or sports sedan, that can perform like a well-tuned race car on curvy country roads will somehow be influenced by a sullen-looking man in a dress holding a sledgehammer? Or are Jaguar sales about to get hammered?
Published in General
OMG!! That’s awful. Sigh.
Man, that’s rough. And from the company that arguably made the best looking cars of all time.
They should have stuck with the ad made for them from that movie with Dudley Moore about the ad agency. The one where they cut straight to the point with honesty in their ads. They said of Volvos “Volvo – they’re boxy but they’re good”. The Jaguar ad said something about lonely rich men and prostitutes, but it was totally better than this.
This is truly a terrible ad — even putting aside all the cringe (as the kids say). It’s not even edgy, at this point. It’s just stale, and not even well-done stale.
It’s a UK ad campaign. They do things differently in the Old Country. Dylan Mulvaney doesn’t mean a thing there.
Sigh. Yeah, Jaguar is not the company it used to be. They have discontinued every single vehicle, save for the F-Pace, which is an SUV, and that will be killed around the end of the year. Jaguar will produce zero vehicles while they are transitioning to an all-electric car company, focusing on vehicles on vehicles roughly two or three times more expensive than their traditional line-up. Or maybe the company will just die.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a62716329/future-of-jaguar/
Here’s one from the glory days.
Check out the JaguarUSA website:
https://www.jaguarusa.com/index.html
Yeah, that’s bad.
Now, here’s a Jaguar ad done right:
I watched the ad again. The guy with the paintbrush had a half-smile for half a second. Hey everybody, buy a Jag and you can feel as glum as these people! I know if I had an F-Type in British Racing Green Metallic with tan leather, I would have an actual smile.
He’s smiling because he’s thinking about all the money he was being paid to be in the ad. Sort of like a celebrity at a Kamala rally or town hall.
You say that as if it’s a good thing.
You might be surprised.
Also, I find it amusing that an ad, one of whose taglines is “Copy Nothing” contains such an obvious shoutout to Apple’s 1984 Macintosh Superbowl ad.
And, I’m pretty sure most of you reading this are saying it wrong. Repeat after me:
They couldn’t even stick in 2 or 3 seconds of the car driving around a bend or accelerating up a hill. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car commercial without a car in it. This easily could have been a Benneton ad.
I pronounce it the way I hear British car race announcers say it. Three syllables, but a little bit stronger on the third syllable than the lady in the above clip.
Can’t find a clip, but “Married… With Children” had an episode involving a car company wanting to build a factory on the land with the football field where Al “scored four touch-downs in a single game.” It was a Mexican car company, called “Haguar.”
There is precedence for no cars in a car commercial: The first ads in 1989 or so for the Infiniti brand cars (the upscale Nissan brand introduced to the United States at the same time that Toyota introduced the Lexus) showed no cars (mostly fields and nature scenes). That Infiniti ad campaign was generally considered a mistake as Lexus sales immediately took off, and Infiniti struggled with its introduction.
That said, Jaguar is not currently making cars, so the manufacturer company has no immediate interest in currently selling cars. Dealers (who have already bought their inventory cars from the manufacturer) have more than a year’s worth of inventory clear out before the manufacturer is supposed to introduce a totally new all-electric model line-up next year. So, the only (new) cars to be sold are already manufactured and already in dealers’ inventory.
The Jaguar car brand is currently owned by Tata of India. Normally, when Tata buys a brand, Tata leaves it alone and doesn’t try to make radical changes. But several years ago Jaguar did take a radically different approach from its previous direction. That shift may have started before Tata bought the brand, but I don’t know.
There’s a good reason for that, though. Infiniti cars and SUVs are almost all terribly ugly. Blindfold me and put me in an Inifiniti and I may think this is a really nice car. But in its 30+ year history, I can’t think of any Inifiniti that I ever thought was attractive. And some have been revolting.
Message received: we aren’t focused on making cars, we’re here to make a point.
Action taken: none. Will ignore in future.
We’re tangentially working with an ad agency again through a common client. They’re all absolutely clueless when it comes to design and branding principles, the only thing they understand is shock.
I wonder if the ad was filmed even knowing what the product was. If the point was just to make some weird art, then lay on some captions telling you who paid for the ad, the production company could use the same footage for an ad for coffee, aluminum siding, or athlete’s foot medicine.
Is this a repeat of “It’s a dessert topping AND a floor wax!”?
…or a Kamala for President commercial.
You’ve already got a legendary brand. Which giant brain in the corporate office decided to “improve” that with this mess?
One of the most bizarre (can’t think of another word) revelations of my life came when my stepdaughter told me that her former husband was so offended by my use of the “JAG-YOU-UR” word (as I’ve always said it), and my discussion of decades-old problems with the manufacturer, after he’d said something between “jagWIRE” and “jagWAHR” while pontificating on the matter (he considers himself something of a luxury car expert), that it was one of the shout-downs that led to their eventual divorce. Whew.
Crazy People. Great movie, with a terrible ending.
How do you spell Dylan Mulvaney in British?
Odds are it’s a new Marketing Director looking to make her mark.
From Randy’s link to Car and Driver, it seems like they are going all EV. That’s really worked out well for a lot of companies (/s). English cars have a bad reputation for electrical problems, so going all electric doesn’t bode well.
If the EV thing doesn’t rescue the company, they can switch to making cologne or perfume and reuse this ad.
Perhaps it was originally a Kamala Harris for President ad that was repurposed for Jaguar.
That’s what I can’t understand. Who, besides the producer’s mother, could possibly such a monstrosity would be effective in selling cars. What was the producer’s and the sponsor’s intent? If any.
I think they may have been thinking jock itch.