Jaguar asks customers to 'delete ordinary' in make-or-break brand reinvention
Brand relaunch is modernist but 'returns Jaguar back to its values'
Jaguar has unveiled its new brand identity, which will see the 89-year-old carmaker shift upmarket in an attempt to position itself alongside luxury names such as Dior and Louis Vuitton.
At a preview event to launch its “Reimagine Strategy”, assembled media at the firm’s headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire were told that a talent pool of 800 staff, including engineers, designers and marketing executives, have spent the last three-and-a-half years working together on a holistic approach to the rebrand.
Jaguar has already started on-road testing of a new four-door electric GT, due to go on sale next year, and according to Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover, the aim is to return the firm to making “the most desirable sports and saloon cars in the world.”
But the vehicles — all of which will be pure electric and based on all-new underpinnings — are only a part of a stated move “from the crafting of things to the crafting of beautiful experiences”.
“The time for us to take small, conservative steps has gone,” said Glover. The new approach, he pointed out, involves one core principle: “fearless creativity”. People are invited to “delete the ordinary”, “live vivid” and “break moulds” with the reinvented Jaguar brand, which will convey “exuberance” above all else. By this, Jaguar means it will be “bold, dramatic and disruptive,” Glover said.
The new Jaguar is proud of its history but will be “modernist” and forward-looking, he said. It will also be compelling, and therefore “engaging, energetic and original”.
The new ethos reflects the “copy nothing” approach of Sir William Lyons, Jaguar’s founder, Glover added.
New ‘symbols of change’
The most obvious outward changes will updated brand elements, dubbed “symbols of change”, including a revised Jaguar device mark. This uses a mix of upper and lower case letters in a new, bespoke font called “Jaguar Exuberant”. The logo is designed to work not just on the cars but in a number of different scenarios, and will be seen in both 2D and 3D applications.
Jaguar is also introducing what it calls the “Strikethrough” — a barcode-like series of 16 parallel lines that, in the words of Richard Stevens, the company’s brand design director, will become a “primary code”, as recognisable as the Jaguar device mark, and “unlock a new world of patternation and abstraction”.
A third brand identifier will be what was described as the “colour world”, with a number of chosen hues designed to “add contrast, depth and tonality” to brand applications. “It feels exuberant but has an ownable quality,” said Stevens.
Finally, the new maker’s mark comprises two letter Js, mirrored across the vertical and horizontal, touching an outer edge line within a circle.
Stevens confirmed that the Jaguar leaper — the image of the jumping cat — would never be abandoned by the brand. However, it “will always be delivered through the most precious substrates,” he said. One application shown to media involved a leaper within the Strikethrough pattern.
“We are balancing pure emotion with rational thought,” said Stevens. “We want people to feel rather than think.”
Gerry McGovern, JLR’s chief creative officer, said the reimagining of Jaguar had been a truly collaborative effort, and freed the company from an old approach that prevented Jaguar from being unique. The holistic approach started with the brand, he said, involving user experience and spacial designers from the start.
McGovern admitted that the complete reinvention of Jaguar would make some people feel uncomfortable and is likely to polarise opinion, but claimed that it followed Lyons’ approach of copying nothing and creating objects of desire. “It returns Jaguar back to its values,” he said, adding: “Exuberant modernism is tangible — it’s real.”
Creative, independently-minded customers
Jaguar’s new customers can be defined as sharing a mindset, according to Glover. They are independently-minded, curious about brands, creative and want to make a statement, he said. Jaguar’s new customers will also be younger than before, affluent, urban, looking for exclusivity, and cash rich but time poor.
As part of catering for this new type of customer, Jaguar has focused on a new “seamless” customer experience, which includes a new website with simpler, more intuitive navigation, as well as a phone app. Customers will have a “personal interaction” with the brand through a bespoke digital experience, but also via a concierge who can manage servicing of the vehicles on their behalf. This will include picking up the car and leaving behind an equivalent courtesy vehicle, then swapping the vehicles back after the service has been completed.
New brand stores
Jaguar will retain its existing network of dealers, it said, who will have the next six to twelve months to prepare themselves and existing customers for the new brand strategy and range of products. However, a new line of “curated brand stores” will also appear, alongside other luxury retailers on high streets and in shopping malls, starting in Paris before appearing elsewhere around the world.
A new concept car, called the Design Vision, that shows off Jaguar’s new strategy and hints at the future product range, will be show at Miami Art Week on December 3.
Related articles
- If you were interested in Jaguar’s brand relaunch, you might also like to check out our first look at its camouflaged electric four-door grand tourer, snapped during on-road testing
- Also read our farewell to the Jaguar F-Type: A final drive of Jaguar’s stunning sports car
- And take a look at Jaguar Land Rover’s plans for a new battery factory in Somerset at cost of £4 billion
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