You won’t find the playbook that Jaguar is following in any recognised textbook

I hadn’t thought about the Jaguar brand since 2016. I know that it was that long ago because I clearly remember being suddenly reminded of the make while watching Sky News, of all things, which was covering the dramatic unfolding of the result of the Brexit referendum.

A news helicopter was following British Prime Minister David Cameron’s cavalcade as it raced back to Westminster. He was begrudgingly returning to his desk after yet another relaxing holiday in Spain.

Cameron travelled through the streets of London that afternoon in an obligatory Jaguar XJ model – an appropriate symbol of British power and diplomacy, I thought to myself. At that time, Jaguar of course was still the preferred brand of choice for British prime ministers, members of the royal family and banking executives who wanted to project an image of steady control.

With a legacy that spans more than 100 years, the brand was bred on the racetrack and grew by serving a niche market of collectors, connoisseurs and contrarians.

Along with Land Rover, today it is owned by the Tata Group, which bought it from Ford right after the global financial crisis in 2008. Despite its enviable heritage and the ongoing efforts of its owners, however, consumer demand over the past few decades for Jaguar vehicles has been anaemic.

Faced with a less-than-ideal financial outlook, the brand’s owners were presumably presented with a number of possible futures to choose from in the early 2020s, which would no doubt have included: (1) calling it a day by selling it on, or closing shop entirely; (2) going back to their racing pedigree past and niching themselves in an enthusiast’s market that would still demand raw internal combustion power; (3) compete in a mass market premium vehicle category along with BMW, Audi, etc; or (4) they could wipe the slate clean and go all-in on their interpretation of their preferred future for the brand.

Past transformational attempts courtesy of incremental improvements here and there clearly had not worked very well, so early anecdotal evidence suggests that Jaguar decided that a radical approach was the right option and chose to “go nuclear” (as Elon Musk would put it) on the brand.

Pivoting a 100-year-old car brand with all its hits and misses is incredibly difficult when it’s carrying so much historical baggage. Even though the business had largely lost its commercial thrust, nostalgia is a powerful driver of sentiment that can have a significant influence on the quality of the decision-making of those tasked with guiding the brand into the future.

This historical weight must have been identified as a critical barrier to any successful strategic manoeuvring for the brand, because Jaguar’s solution to resolving the issue has been brutal.

Two weeks ago they launched a new visual identity and new brand teaser campaign (both of which have inspired much comment and debate) that was clearly designed to flush out any remnants of their old customer base. To put it delicately, Jaguar didn’t just tweak their identity – they went to extreme lengths to ensure that the future of the brand looks nothing like its past.

Many are appalled that a brand would willingly alienate itself from its supposed target market, but in general, the old target market was not exactly enthusiastically buying their products in the first place, so getting rid of them is perhaps a blessing in disguise.

Let’s be realistic, there is no point in continuing to seek the approval of people who find more value in your competitors.

To put a nail in the coffin of its past, Jaguar also completely cleared its old social media posts on Instagram, X and Facebook. You can’t entirely erase history, obviously, but you can make a bold public statement and hold a position that what is truly remarkable about the brand lies not in the past but is still yet to come.

Gone are the engines, the leather, the chrome, the analogue dials, the smoking jackets and the symbols of old-world power.

In come radical design, technology and luxury. The future vision of Jaguar looks nothing like its past. Nigel Farage is seething; Jaguar don’t care.

Because in a new-energy vehicle world, “power” doesn’t carry as much weight as does “design”.

Power is a commodity, design is marketable.

Engineers get giddy about torque; Taylor Swift wants her car to look exceptional and preferably pink.

The way Jaguar appears to be seeing the world into which we are moving: all desirable vehicles will be electric; a unique vision of the future is more valuable than provenance; and what qualifies products to be compelling is design that pushes the human imagination forward.

Rather than courting British cabinet ministers, they want a younger customer who lives in Singapore, Seoul or Shanghai, is a member of a successful K-pop group and knows how to pronounce the word “Loewe”. 

You won’t find the playbook that Jaguar is following in any recognised textbook.

Brand, strategy and marketing professionals are understandably dumbfounded that any executive team would in their right mind rubberstamp such an audaciously risky approach. The strategy could absolutely fail miserably, but so too could all the other alternatives.

But to put their decision-making in context, the Tata Group has already been rather successful with the turnaround of the Land Rover brand – thanks largely to the design of the new Range Rover and Defender models by Gerry McGovern. So perhaps the way they see it, they don’t have anything to lose by fully embracing uncertainty and taking a big bet with Jaguar.

When it comes to cars, I too have warm and fuzzy memories of the Ferrari 308 GTS (the one Tom Selleck drove in Magnum PI), the Lancia Delta Integrale, and Roger Moore’s Lotus Esprit in the 1977 Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.

Who doesn’t still love the look of the Lamborghini Miura or the old Alfa Romeo GTV from the early 1980s? Hands up who still fondly remembers the charming little Fiat X19 or the classic Aston Martin DBS?

These are all still lovely cars in my mind, but I certainly wouldn’t consider buying one, or an iteration thereof, now.

Nostalgia is a poor custodian of the future; imagination is a far better master of where the premium car industry could be heading. DM