- Ahead of its shift to an all-EV future, Jaguar unveiled a new brand identity this year.
- The rebrand was roasted by many online. But some advertising vets have said it was a smart strategy.
- Jaguar’s first new EV model is expected in 2025 — and industry watchers said it has to deliver.
Jaguar gambled big this year on a total brand transformation. And in 2025, the British luxury carmaker will need to prove all the fuss was worth it.
It’s set next year to debut the first EV in its new all-electric lineup: After setting up global audiences to expect something big — this year’s Jaguar advertising controversy was the talk of the industry and beyond — now it’s got to deliver something that matches the moment its rebrand has created, industry watchers said.
A space-age concept car — presented in pink and blue — with swooping lines and curious interior features stoked some excitement for the brand, whose leaders have said it intends to go much more upmarket.
Sometime next year, if the company stays on its own timeline, we’ll see the result.
“I think the biggest risk for them now is making sure the production model lives up to the promise and doesn’t suffer death by a thousand cuts,” Greg Andersen, the CEO of the Omaha, Nebraska, creative agency Bailey Lauerman, told BI recently. “Rolling out an unapologetic, future-facing brand along with a marginally better car might not go so well.”
Here’s how Jaguar — a favored vehicle of the British royal family, UK prime ministers, and James Bond villains — got to this point:
Jaguar’s slumping sales call for a reset
Jag’s sales had been slumping globally for years. In 2021, Jaguar first announced that it would ditch internal combustion engines and go all-in on EVs.
And in 2024, the nearly century-old Jaguar made major moves to ramp up that transition. Jaguar Land Rover, owned by India-based Tata Motors, said it would phase out production of all its current models by the end of this year.
In their place will come the new fully electric models, the first of which the company said would be unveiled in 2025 — and are expected to go on sale to the public in 2026.
A new Jaguar is born
In November of this year, soon after stopping new vehicle sales in the UK, Jaguar released the controversial new vision and brand identity.
The public reaction to the debut of Jaguar’s new rebranding campaign wasn’t quite as positive as the company may have hoped.
In particular, a promotional video Jag unveiled as part of the campaign — which also included an updated typeface for Jaguar’s iconic logo, a redesigned leaping-jaguar mark, and a new creative philosophy to “copy nothing” — raised some eyebrows.
The video shows models clad in colorful, ultra-modern outfits doing things like exiting an elevator, painting a wall, and swinging a sledgehammer before they all sit down on a rock in a pink desert landscape.
Phrases like “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” and “delete ordinary,” flashed across the screen. And notably, for a car company, there were no cars in the ad.
Social media users, late-night TV hosts, and some in the media roasted Jaguar over its decision not to include cars in the video, which was a viral sensation.
Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk weighed in, posting on X: “Do you sell cars?”
“The Late Show’s” Stephen Colbert said on his program: “Where are the cars? Does Jaguar sell ketamine now?”
It wasn’t just the lack of cars in the initial video that got people talking. A rash of criticism cropped up online and elsewhere, with some right-leaning personalities accusing the company of abandoning its traditional history and pushing into “woke” politics.
In response to the backlash, Jaguar’s managing director Rawdon Glover told the Financial Times he was disappointed by “the level of vile hatred and intolerance” that he said the video garnered online, particularly against the models it featured. But he also said the campaign had drummed up positive buzz.
Marketing and rebranding professionals gave mixed reviews to Business Insider at the time — one called the campaign “bonkers,” and another said it was a relatively successful rollout.
The ad industry vets all agreed that, at the very least, the rebrand sparked conversation.
Jaguar released a concept car to match its new image
A few weeks after its rebrand launch, at the beginning of December, Jaguar unveiled a design concept for its next generation of electric vehicles — finally pairing an image of a car with its “exuberant modernism” rebranding campaign.
The pastel-colored concept car — dubbed “Type 00” for zero tailpipe emissions and its status as car zero in the brand’s new lineage — featured several novel design elements, like a glassless rear tailgate, a brass divider running through the middle of the cabin, and pedestals of travertine stone to support the floating seats.
When the concept car was released, several advertising veterans applauded it for continuing Jag’s rebrand strategy.
“This is a master class in what rebranding can accomplish for a company — a new forward-facing product and brand, clearly designed for its new customer persona, that everyone is talking about,” Jim Heininger, the founder and principal of the Chicago firm The Rebranding Experts, previously told Business Insider.
Others were less convinced.
Christos Joannides, the founder and creative director of the luxury branding agency Flat 6 Concepts in Los Angeles, said the concept car didn’t do enough to ground Jaguar’s new ethos in reality.
“By showcasing a production model with more realistic features, Jaguar could have conveyed its vision more effectively and provided tangible evidence of its direction,” Joannides said. “As it stands, the concept car feels superficial and gimmicky, like a desperate attempt to be different without any real substance or coherent strategy.”
Jaguar needs to deliver in 2025
For better or worse, Jaguar had a big year. And even bigger is the company’s need to follow through next year.
The first model of Jaguar’s new lineup — the electric four-door GT — will be unveiled in late 2025, the company has said.
It said the model would use dedicated Jaguar Electric Architecture, have a projected driving range of up to 430 miles on a single charge, and be able to add up to 200 miles of range after 15 minutes of rapid charging.
But with a price tag that could near $200,000, Jaguar’s new models will really need to be incredible, EV news outlet Electrek argued.
With so much competition, it could still be a tough sell.
“Unless Jaguar’s expectations for its upcoming line of EVs is tempered with a dose of reality, the company will be planning to produce far more vehicles than there will be buyers willing to take them home,” analyst Sam Fiorani, vice president of global forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, told Car and Driver.
Jaguar has said updating its brand for the future is the right move.
“We have forged a fearlessly creative new character for Jaguar that is true to the DNA of the brand but future-facing, relevant, and one that really stands out,” managing director Glover said at the time the concept car was revealed.
We’ll see next year whether it was right.
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