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Jaguar's rebrand - smart thinking or too far?

Journalist: Jon Brady, Daily Mail

ended 20. November 2024

Car company Jaguar has unveiled a radical new look that no longer features the ‘growler’ big cat badge - and a newer, modern font for its logo. It was unveiled with a colourful video that featured no cars yesterday to a largely negative reaction online.

But is this a storm in a teacup, and will Jaguar pull it all back when it unveils its new concept car in Miami next month? What does it mean when a company like this, with 100 years of history, appears to ditch most of its best known iconography?

If you're a design expert, I want to hear from you!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14105007/jaguar-woke-car-scraps-cat-logo-electric-ad.html

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Oli Garnett
Co-Founder at Something Familiar.
Jaguar’s rebrand is a bit of a dog’s dinner. Jaguar, once the dashing E-Type of the automotive world, is now awkwardly trundling into the room in an ill-fitting suit of “exuberant modernism". As a creative director, I appreciate bold moves, but this rebrand feels like they’ve swapped the growling jaguar for a confused house cat pawing at a Roomba. First, let’s talk about the new logo. Apparently, it’s a “celebration of modernism". In reality, it’s the typographic equivalent of trying to be cool by turning up to a black-tie event in trainers. Symmetry? Harmony? Not in this postcode, mate. It looks like the design intern fell asleep on the keyboard. Then there’s the gold-plated aesthetic—because nothing says “tech-forward electric vehicle” like the color of a 1970s bathroom tap. And as for their “inspired by the painter’s palette” colour scheme, it’s more B&Q tester pot than Mondrian masterpiece.
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Chris Bullick
Director of brand strategy at The Pull Agency
The truth is Jaguar were already in trouble. The question is whether they have let the trouble get so deep that this rebrand and the new range of luxury saloon EVs will get them out of that. But it's such a reboot, there is a real danger they will leave all their current brand customers and fans behind (they have after all literally deleted every historic Instagram post, and their page now just shows the logo and ‘that’ video). I can’t remember any brand literally deleting their past. Harley Davidson faced a similar dilemma. They failed to progress the brand and bring in younger buyers so met with an existential crisis. They responded by creating an electric bike called Livewire targeted at Millennials and (have effectively) decided to let the old brand die. This brand strategy feels horribly similar. They have discarded their heritage and their fan base. They will have to find a lot of new fans for the new brand.
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Nick Jervis
Director at Nick Jervis
A poor copy of Apple's 1984 Macintosh Advertisment it seems to me.