After Jaguar's unveiling of its bold new identity was met with an online backlash, Sophie Tolhurst deconstructs and analyses the rebrand.
It won't have escaped your notice that last week British car brand Jaguar launched a new identity and campaign video ahead of revealing a concept electric vehicle (EV) at the upcoming Miami art week. The reaction online has been fierce, to say the least.
While any rebrand is likely to suffer backlash, Jaguar was always going to have a particularly challenging job of it: hoping to turn a leaf after years of poor performance, moving to becoming 100 per cent electric as well as entering a far higher price point – all without a new, shiny product to show.
Without anything solid to back it up, the mixed-case device mark is too easy to mock
Taking place during a pause in manufacturing and selling ahead of its electric-only relaunch in 2026, Jaguar was hoping to lay the foundations with this brand reveal instead. "The New Era. A seismic change is coming," says Jaguar's website. The optimists are holding out for the product reveal.
What do we know so far? The first, and particularly furore-inducing glimpse, was the 30-second campaign film featuring no cars but instead a diverse cast of people costumed in bright monochromatic outfits and stalking a pink, barren, rock-strewn landscape. What does this all mean? Cue some vapid copy.
Less universally reviled, but not exactly popular, were the branded elements revealed so far: a device mark, monogram roundel and maker's mark. But without anything solid to back it up, the mixed-case device mark – reading JaGUar – is too easy to mock, coming across a fudged solution more iNterNEt SpEaK than iPhone individuality.
The monogrammed roundel lacks clarity too: is it a J and an R, or two J's? And while I can see some feline quality, or even the tension of a coiled pounce in the smooth, spaced letterforms, there is plenty of potential for upset in the stripping of heritage for a new aesthetic seemingly designed to alienate its old customer base, with even the namesake animal removed from prominent position.
Post-video, a few more car-like forms were revealed, perhaps goaded out of Jaguar by Elon Musk's snarky "Do you sell cars?" post on X.
So what's next? With stated ambitions to become a catch-all luxury brand, there is a lot of new ground for the consumer, or yet-to-be consumer. But does Jaguar even know what it is yet?
To be fair to Jaguar, car concept reveal is often a case of smoke and mirrors
Rather than explore its own heritage as the kernel of some new, seismic idea, simply wanting to have a new idea is seemingly the point, picking up brand founder Sir William Lyons' claim that "a Jaguar should be a copy of nothing". For now, the future Jaguar is offering feels baffling rather than visionary, leaning on others' visions of the future until it finds its own.
The model with a sledgehammer in the Jaguar film recalls one in the famous first Apple Macintosh ad, shown at the 1984 superbowl and directed by Ridley Scott, where a woman runs in to smash through a greyscale Orwellian dystopia to Apple's bright new future. They didn't bother to mention or show a product either.
Elsewhere, it conjures generic white-and-bright tech futurism of the 2010s, and where there are similarities to branding codes of the present, they are, much to the amusement of online commenters, those of vapes, personal hygiene products or sex toys.
To be fair to Jaguar, car concept reveal is often a case of smoke and mirrors, or rather, plexiglass and light, launched as installations at art or design fairs – as Jaguar's will soon be, too. Recent Lexus EV launches, for example, have seen collaborations with artists and designers such as Marjan van Aubel and Suchi Reddy – useful to lend a bit of aura to the concept stage.
Jaguar's bold move was to try and launch something so vague and self-serious before the help of a trade show context or a car-like form to salivate over. With stated ambitions to become a luxury brand, moving into an experience-led or category-crossing future, it is relying on sheer expression to cover the new ground. For all the talk of modernism, it probably would have been easier to go for form and function.
While the project is credited as in-house, press releases state that Jaguar wants to "advo[cate] for artistic expression, in all forms". Hopefully one of the two gallery spaces in Miami will be able to sketch a convincing picture next week.
The campaign recalls other kinds of faux-progress
But where they have gestured to wider creativity here – mainly in the much-mocked models with angular haircuts and monochrome outfits – I don't get the feeling that these will be part of Jaguar's luxury vision.
Lacking context, they are left looking more like a hairdressing expo, and, as I often do, I feel for fashion. Rarely understood by other design disciplines, it is nonetheless wheeled out in service of vague posturing – but without the due care and attention it deserves (could no one have pinned, or Photoshopped those coat lapels to look their best?)
And as for the people wearing the clothes, such has been the anger at who is and isn't in the ad that Jaguar's managing director Rawdon Glover expressed disappointment to the Financial Times over the "vile hatred" spawned by it, while also saying: "This is not a depiction of how we think our future customers are."
Looking for the substance behind the change, there is the £15bn of investment over five years to assist the move to electric, such as a Jaguar Land Rover-linked battery recycling project to reduce the need for raw materials – but this is not the stuff of the rebrand.
Instead, the campaign recalls other kinds of faux-progress: out with bad, dirty smoking and in with a breath of flavoured, child-friendly vapes; cloud computing eliminating physical clutter and simply sweeping it cleanly under the digital carpet – not to mention electric cars. Are those rocks in the pink Jaguar landscape a rose-tinted reference to the exploitative, inequitable, and dangerous mining industry behind battery wonder materials?
Not that you'd look to the high-end automotive industry for a new paragon of sustainability. And if all this turns out to be a genius publicity move, Jaguar is seemingly happy to risk those elements that stand out – diversity, ambitions for a better future, creative work – and make them the butt of the joke.
Sophie Tolhurst is a Sheffield-based design writer and former fashion designer. She was previously a senior writer at Design Week and deputy editor at FX Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in Creative Review, Disegno, the Financial Times, and Frieze.
Dezeen In Depth
If you enjoy reading Dezeen's interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.
The post "The future Jaguar is offering feels baffling rather than visionary" appeared first on Dezeen.
