Could Jaguar have rebranded successfully in the first place?

A dying audience, a slumping product, a pricey price point

Author’s Note: This is long: I’m sorry. I put it under sub-headings for you, out of benevolence.

I was once on a call with a very cross CEO, a very cross CFO, and a very, very cross CMO. As with many situations, I decided to draw some gnomes on my planner and let the big boys do the bellowing for me. After all, the chances of being listened to as the only woman and only person under 30 on the call were a big, fat zero. “Here’s the truth, Bill,” the CMO snarled at the CEO, “doing anything is better than doing nothing.” Now this was about a garden centre, but it also applies to cars.

Sometimes, even the worst marketing idea imaginable is better than radio silence. Even the most unpopular, stupid, vapid campaign is better than no campaign. The worst thing you can possibly have, as a B2C entity, is zero market presence. Don’t ever let your brand become the brand that makes people say; “oh, is that still going?”

Which brings me to the big question about the jaguar in the room: was it even possible to bring Jaguar back from the dead in the first place? Even if that rebrand hadn’t been the biggest marketing flop of all time?

A) Yes. Oh fuck, yes. They just needed to be a teensy bit sneakier. They just needed a Madelaine on the team. Here’s what I’d have done, and where they went (infamously, history-makingly, first-seminar warningly) wrong.

Safe to say, I have some thoughts: Hansoning Jaguar

How do you get everyone talking about an old brand?

We all know what Jaguar ‘is’. A 15 year old knows what Jaguar ‘is’. It’s old school. Suave. Genteel. A bit like that elderly uncle who tells amazing stories from the sixties, but is just a tiny bit too feeble and faded to hang out with all the time. Jaguar is respected. But, as I don’t need to tell you auto lovers, that doesn’t translate into the absolute car crash that is their sales figures.

So got it, a good objective to start: get attention back on the brand and drive up sales. Fine. The idiot way of doing this (what happened) is by doing something so controversial everyone talks about it. The side effect of this (bad) is that it…