Imagine. It was going quite well, even after they had agreed to stop selling cars (for now), when the new brand proposition ‘Copy nothing’ was presented. “Fits well with the brand’s heritage and spirit of innovation” suggested the CEO “and with our bold step to leave internal combustion engines behind.” The two words' unintended double-meaning had yet to emerge, for, unwittingly, the Board was approving something no-one else would ever want to copy. Or would they?
Then the new Jaguar wordmark was unveiled. Out with the distinctive (perhaps never beautiful) squared-off logotype and in with ‘contemporary sans’ and 'mixed case' typography. The capitalised G and U were argued to be a prompt to “help wealthy Texans stress the right letters, j a G U a r, rather than ‘Jagwar’”, and the U “to emphasise inclusion in a single letter”. One director interjected that it reminded him of “that fast fashion brand from Leicester” but he was swiftly put back in his engineering place. He tightened his British Racing Green tie, shuffled in his caramel leather Eames chair, rearranged his Jermyn Street-tailored jacket and decided not to comment further. Clearly he didn’t understand the new target market.
The new logo followed. An encircled lower case j and r - or is it two js? - that looks the same everyway-up, with no sign of the emblematic growling cat that has adorned the bonnets of the marque’s most famous cars for decades. In the silence that followed one director thought to himself “This looks like a hotel bar ashtray, before they were banned, obviously, but at least Farage might like that.”
Then the new cat motif was revealed. Out with the unique, tactile, sculpted leaping cat and in with a flat 2D silhouette against go-faster stripes, reminiscent of Renault Sport from the 1980’s. A non-executive director, whose love affair with big cats goes back to his childhood, – he still drives his 3.8 E-type roadster to the Goodwood Revival every September - interjected “I know nothing about graphic design, but it looks as if we’ve put the big cat behind bars.” “Our target customers love bars!” quipped the Creative Genius “but we have to delete ordinary! Everything before is dead, including the leaping cat, its noisy growls and nasty claws. We have to cleanse our brand of everything past and start afresh”. The majority male board shuffled a little more in their caramel leather Eames chairs.
“Are we not killing a British icon?” questioned the lone female non-Exec. “Certainly not! We are liberating the leaper from toxic masculinity to enjoy a more diverse and creative future.” replied the CG.
The silent thinker thought again “Without our heritage we’re going to look like a Chinese EV start-up at five times the price.” In that moment, he had no idea how prescient an unspoken thought could be.
And then, the moment I’ve been especially waiting for. The big reveal of the Big Campaign Idea.
The reel rolled and the board was stunned. A senior non-exec director asked “Sorry, what have we just watched?” “Genius at work” replied the CG, “A campaign to change everyone’s perceptions of the brand. No-one would think these characters were Jaguar customers, but THEY ARE NOW!”
“This is a joke, isn’t it?” whispered one director to another. “It’s not April” came the reply. “Christ!, we’re in trouble.”
“Umm, have you tested this with customers?” asked the Chairman. “Of course!” replied the CG. “We have created a global panel of 250,000 synthetic panellists to mimic hard-to-reach diverse Gen-Z demographics and they ALL LOVE IT! Amazing results, look at this chart! They particularly liked the gender ambiguity of our new positioning. Data doesn't lie, hard numbers; proof!”
“What are synthetic panellists?” asked a long-serving director, whose upcoming retirement meant this was probably the last question he would table at a Jaguar board meeting. “I knew you’d ask that. They emulate real people, trained on neural networks so they are more like real people than real people. We can now test our creative on hundreds of thousands, even millions of respondents in minutes; for peanuts.” The long-serving director realised that he had one more question in him “But did you test it on anyone who, actually, er, is a living person, someone who is alive? Maybe a loyal Jaguar customer?”, “Of course not! Remember we are deleting ordinary. The past is dead.”
“Who is responsible for the ad?” asked the Chief People Officer, concerned about his employee value proposition to the world’s brightest engineering graduates. “Well, we did this all in-house, using AI for the script, direction and production. You wouldn’t believe it, but the models aren’t even real people, so we don’t have to pay any repeat fees!”
“Genius!” chipped-in the CFO, "Thank you" replied the CG, and more than half the board agreed.
The director with the green tie leaned over to his equally uncertain colleague, a veteran of polished chrome, walnut and Connolly hide, and whispered “I’m going to have to sell the E-type. Can’t be seen dead in a Jag again...”
Read the next episode to find out whether Jaguar pulled off a genius marketing masterstroke, or did indeed vandalise their brand.
Peter Matthews
Founder & CEO
P.S. Here are the CG's three AI prompts:
Prompt description: "Develop a rebranding strategy for an ageing car brand for the purpose of increasing brand awareness and engagement with a niche market of diverse Gen-Z consumers."
Prompt context: "The brand won’t sell cars until 2026 when the new EVs are launched."
Prompt output: "The rebranding strategy will get people talking about the brand again, ahead of the new product reveal."
Note: an imaginary tale, no characters are based on real people. I wasn’t there, but really would have loved to be.