Last week, car manufacturer Jaguar unveiled an extensive rebrand, ditching the iconic wildcat logo for a minimalist text design. Car aficionados and people-who-have-never-even-thought-about-Jaguar-before-this-moment alike decried the change as “meh”.
In response to the near-universal mocking, Jaguar has opted for no logo whatsoever stating, “Fine, if you’re not happy with what you’re given you’ll get nothing at all!”
The new-new logo is an even more minimalist approach: a plain white logo on a plain white background. This ultra-modern design will serve as a cheaper alternative to previous logos since the company will now no longer require any branding on its cars, showrooms, website or marketing materials. Instead, a simple blank space will “infer” the brand.
Jaguar hopes that soon all blank spaces will become synonymous with their company so that when people think ‘empty’ they will instantly think, ‘Jaguar’.
Last week’s rebrand was accompanied by a derivative 30-second ad spot entitled, ‘Copy Nothing’. Seemingly directed by an AI, the advertisement features no cars, no jaguars but does show a group of strangely dressed models flaunting about a CGI planetscape amongst pretentious text like “create exuberant” (?), “live vivid” (??) and “delete ordinary” (???).
Despite telling the viewer they plan to copy nothing, the spot was plagiarized from every perfume, LED TV, or office management app commercial ever made. Many internet commenters suggested that Jaguar had gone “woke”, a word which, for those that don’t know, simply means anything that is bad, stupid, or new.
Reacting to this criticism, Jaguar’s rebrand of their rebrand comes with an ad simply called, “Nothing” in which static noise plays for 30 seconds over a blank white screen.
Former critics of Jaguar’s marketing are hailing the re-rebrand as “revolutionary”, “truly mold-breaking” and “so so so dumb”.
Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover responded to the criticism in an effort to defend their millions in sunk costs saying, “If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand.” Excellent plan. Look like you’re selling toothpaste, that way when people get a car they’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Who knows, no publicity is bad publicity, or something, so maybe all this free coverage will translate into sales when their new car is eventually announced. Maybe the bad ad was the plan all along. Maybe we’ve been had. Maybe Jaguar really did… create exuberant.
