British luxury carmaker Jaguar has rebranded to a chorus of derision from just about every corner of the motoring world.
Just some of the comments are that the rebrand ‘lacks claws’, is ‘woke’, ‘unhinged’ and ‘embarrassing’. One respondent on Jaguar’s Instagram said ‘Congratulations, you’ve killed a British icon.’
The Spectator wrote that Jaguar has: ‘decided to torpedo their hard-won reputation in such a perplexingly unforced fashion.’
What’s got everyone so revved up?
Jaguar’s new ad campaign, a 30-second clip from which features human models of varying ages, genders, and races dressed in vibrantly coloured outfits, along with phrases such as “live vivid”, “delete ordinary,” “break moulds” and “copy nothing”, all backed by a minimalist techno soundtrack. But no cars.
One particularly influential commentator, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, wrote ‘Do you sell cars?’ on his platform X.
After 100 years purveying the proud heritage of the luxury Jaguar brand long associated with wealthy older men, the controversial new rebrand couldn’t be further from Jaguar’s established motoring image if it tried.
The cat’s out the badge
As part of the rebrand out goes the roaring big cat ‘growler’ badge, while Jaguar’s new logo is now in mostly lower case letters on either side of a single capitalised ‘G’.
Santino Pietrosanti, the American marketing guru behind Jaguar’s new look, claimed the rebrand was ‘bold, fearless, exuberant and everything a Jaguar should be,’ promising that the rebrand would ‘bring Jaguar back to something truly special.
‘Jaguar has always stood for fearless originality striving to be a copy of nothing, and we believe that every person has the potential to be something unique, something original, and that’s what makes us strong.’
He also promised that this was only the start – and it’s going to be incredible.
Incredible or not, even some of Pietrosanti’s professional peers didn’t hold back on their views of the rebrand.
Joseph Alessio, a designer and art director based in California, suggested this ‘would be taught in schools as how not to do a rebrand.’
Another designer commented that ‘the Jaguar rebrand is going to go down in history as one of the most destructive marketing moves ever attempted.’
A new dawn for Jaguar
Despite the tsunami of negative criticism, according to Jaguar’s MD, detractors of the new image are overlooking the fact that the old guard are no longer the target market.
That will be a new, younger audience who will have an all-electric range of brand new models from 2026 after Jaguar’s relaunch as an electric-only brand in early December.
Holding company Jaguar Land Rover has already just stopped selling new Jaguar models in the UK, with plans to go electric-only in 2026, when the company invests hundreds of millions of pounds in its UK manufacturing plants.
One thing’s for sure, the free PR and hysteria has given the brand’s new look unprecedented exposure. In the first two weeks of going live, the brand new Jaguar advert was viewed over 2.7m times on YouTube. LinkedIn was also dominated with opinions on the bold new rebrand.
On the social media forum Reddit, one user wrote that the rebrand was “either marketing genius or brand suicide”.
We’ll just have to wait and see which it is.
For a rebrand that you’ll love, get in touch with our strategic and creative team.