Jaguar Needs A Rescue
Jaguar has succeeded in getting everybody’s attention with their ‘Reimagine’ re-branding. However, getting everybody talking about your product doesn’t necessarily translate into sales if the marketing campaign and the product are misaligned. Ever since the now-departed JLR CEO Thierry Bolloré announced the Reimagine strategy in 2021, I thought Jaguar was in big trouble. Now there is a new ‘woke’ advertising campaign and an ‘art car’ that are to be the future of Jaguar. They are literally taking nothing from the existing brand, alienating all of their existing customers, and betting the entire company on a demographic that may not even exist.
There are certain types of products where sales are directly linked to advertising. Vodka is a good example: it is tasteless and odorless and the only thing that differentiates one brand from the other is the marketing campaign (and price). Other ubiquitous items like energy drinks and underwear are similar and can benefit from associations with attractive young models, daring stunts or extreme sports.
Cars aren’t like that because they are all quite different from one another. They sell based on a long list of tangible qualities including, but not limited to, utility, style, performance, reliability, safety, value etc. They are not impulse buys based on subliminal messaging like picking a brand of bottled water from the supermarket shelf. There was a time when you could sell a car based on an advertising slogan (VW Beetle - Think Small) or a celebrity endorsement (Chrysler Cordoba - Ricardo Montalban), but not anymore. Buyers go online and exhaustively research their choices. YouTube content providers have replaced advertisements, brochures and salesman as sources of information. Big, splashy marketing campaigns are mostly irrelevant today; witness Tesla that spends nothing on advertising and doesn’t even a have a PR department.
Jaguar’s marketing campaign is particularly pointless as it doesn’t resonate with the people that buy expensive luxury cars. Reimagine is a re-hash of the United Colours of Benetton ads that have been running for 40 years; substituting a spectrum of LGBTQ+ people for the racially diverse kids in brightly coloured clothing. There is nothing particularly new about promoting social change that you think will resonate with your target market to sell merchandise. It does sell sweaters.
I don’t think it will work for $200,000 cars. The simple reason for that is that the people who spend $200k on a piece of conspicuous consumption don’t want the world to change - after all, it has been good to them.
The socially conscious rich may approve of the messaging, but they don’t flaunt their wealth. They may buy a nice car, but it isn’t part of their ego structure and they don’t show it off. Jaguar’s big new EV will be going to people who want a lot of attention and want to make a statement about themselves. In my experience, they are not the people championing transgender bathrooms.
The 'Reimagine’ messaging is misplaced. It may resonate with young people who want to shake things up, but even if they had the $200k to spend on a car - which almost none do - they wouldn’t spend it on a ‘look at me’ 6,000lb EV.
It is a very, very large stretch to try to compare what Jaguar is doing now to the brand values Sir William Lyons, the founder of Jaguar, created and managed for nearly 40 years. Sir William was a very pragmatic, practical man who and had an eye for classical beauty and tradition. His cars succeeded on grace, style, comfort, performance and value. They have never stood for ‘Fearless Originality’ as Jaguar design director, Santino Pietrosanti, claims. Citroen maybe, but Jaguar has always been on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Whether the car succeeds as a design statement or not, it fails as vehicle in my opinion. The proportions of the car with the long hood evoke some coachbuilt cars of the 1930’s: Duesenberg, Bugatti, Talbot Lago etc. These proportions come from needing to accommodate a long engine - mostly straight-8’s. Electric vehicles have relatively small motors and they are in line with the axles. All the packaging advantages of an EV are wasted with Jaguar's '00' concept. Add to that the fact that you can’t see out of it, there is very limited space inside of it, and it is going to be very heavy. It is not going to be efficient with poor aerodynamics and giant wheels and will take forever to charge on a longer journey. The car is not really going to be good at anything, except for pulling up in front of restaurants. Simply put, the car is out of touch with what just about everybody wants. It is basically an ‘Art Car’.
I’m guessing there might be a market for 1,000 copies worldwide. At a suggested $CAD200k this isn’t even going to be remotely close to being profitable. If the concept car is as far as they have got with the development of the vehicle, it is also unlikely coming within one year as Jaguar claims.
The 'Zero Zero' would make more sense as a limited production, coach built combustion engine car - perhaps with a V12 or V16. The proportions would make sense then and the car would appeal to a lot more buyers as a homage to the ‘Concours d’Elegance’ French cars of the 1930's. As an EV it makes no sense at at all. As a Jaguar it makes no sense at at all.
I am hoping that common sense prevails, and that Jaguar walks back a lot of this nonsense. Jaguar does not need to reimagine itself; It just needs new competitive products. The newest Jaguar, the I-Pace electric SUV, debuted in 2018. The Porsche Macan and the Jaguar F-Pace went on sale at about the same in 2015. The Macan has been refreshed twice since then and they have added an EV variant. Both sedans and the sports car in the Jaguar line up are more than 10 years old. Of course sales are down.
The world wants to buy Hybrid SUVs and that is what Jaguar should offer their dealers and customers. There are enough flexible platforms in JLR's portfolio that Jaguar has the means to develop a cost effective product line. Funding completely different platforms for Land Rover and Jaguar defies all common sense and business acumen.
There was nothing wrong with Lyon’s advertising campaign in the 1960’s; ‘Grace, Space, Pace’. Those are the Jaguar Brand Values which can easily be applied to vehicles people want to buy today.
I believe I can speak for the LGBTQ+ community when I say that they need practical, safe, reliable and USEFUL vehicles, just like everybody else.
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