Putting Jaguar's 'Brand Fail' in Sharper Perspective

The company bets on a different kind of future

By now you’ve read all the pixel punditry about Jaguar’s “Copy Nothing” rebrand. If not, AdAge has written a cohesive breakdown of many of the critiques, which mostly revolve around the video below and place Jag among the top three brand fails of the year, alongside Coca-Cola (which used AI, horribly) and Apple (which failed to read the creatively-embattled room):

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Jaguar’s “fail,” however, is not like Coke or Apple.

There’s plenty that can be said about the aesthetic choices in this work, the lack of cars in the ad, or that twee new logo, which gives us queasy flashbacks to when the Sci-Fi Channel changed its logo to “syfy.”

But lots of people have already said those things, and let’s be honest—the most transparent whinges surrounding “Copy Nothing” are best summed up by the infectious pustule Nigel Farage, whose comments section is practically a focus group of unbridled offense and associated causes. As the most upvoted comment put it, “When the marketing team mishears ‘You need to focus on the trans mission.'”

These complaints about Jaguar are a series of teapot-tempest microaggressions that decry the brand’s “wokism.” What could that be referring to? There’s so much to pull from: The prominent appearance of transgender celebrity Dylan Mulvaney. The presence of mostly non-heteronormative, non-white people. Or even the use of bright colors—the opposite of minimalism. (Fashion geeks may happily point out that chromophobia, or fear of colors, has a colonial history that ties bright shades to inferiority, lack of control and, frankly, non-European whiteness.)

I don’t care about this rebrand at the moment. It takes years to understand how a rebrand will iterate and truly impact a company at large. So, when we set aside the flagrantly racist or gender-anxious critiques, minimizing them all down to weeping over Black James Bonds or Little Mermaids, what have we got?

At the moment, what we’re looking at is a statement of intent, verbalized by Jaguar U.K. director Santino Pietrosanti:

“We’re not just talking about new cars. We are discussing new ways of thinking and embracing the full spectrum of human potential and creativity. Because Jaguar has always stood for fearless originality, striving to be a copy of nothing … At Jaguar, we proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community because we know that originality and creativity thrive in spaces where people are free to be themselves. We’re passionate about our people, and we’re committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and unified culture that is representative of not only the people who use our products but also the society in which we all live.”

What stands out is the brand’s decision to take a fundamentally socio-political stance. It’s not something luxury brands do often, because luxury’s clientele is by definition the elite, and you don’t want to alienate them.

Jaguar is taking that risk anyway, at a time when some clever economist might argue this is a terrible idea. Wealth inequality is now at its highest in the U.S. and the U.K., meaning most of the “minorities” living in those countries have less money to spend.

Elon Musk, who heads Tesla, not only espouses some of the most toxic beliefs imaginable, especially for minorities and women; he’s transformed his car brand—once representative of hope for petrol-free futurists—into a symbolic asset for macho shows of force. He’s also about to consolidate his power in the western world, in a Trump White House stocked with billionaires, technocrats and primarily white men and white-men apologists who think women should stay at home laying eggs and ironing.

So, on one side of the sexy-car spectrum you’ve got Tesla, actively advocating for a world where those in power keep acquiring more, and certain ideas about who’s in charge and what’s “normal”—sexually or otherwise—regress clear back to the days of “I Like Ike.”

But then Jaguar—which many people like to think of as an old rich white man car, regardless of whether that’s true—goes and stakes its claim to the other side of that spectrum.

Like Tiffany in 2021, Jaguar’s making a bet for a different kind of future, where different kinds of people can afford Jaguars. For that to happen, we’d have to restore a broken social contract and take power away from those who see resources, and thriving, as a zero-sum pie. We’d have to adjust our ideas about who’s normal and whether that’s even something to strive for. We’d have to be okay with a little color, without automatically thinking that color—a trademark of nations villainized by northern peers, most recently by the incumbent U.S. President—feels gauche.

Against pretty ruthless odds, Jaguar’s betting that world is coming soon. And you know what? We’ll take that bet. It’s the most optimistic notion anybody’s thrown in front of us all year.