Jaguar unleashed a firestorm when it introduced the new vision for the Jaguar brand in advance of the car’s unveiling Monday at the Miami Art Week. The 30-second brand relaunch video invited controversy as a diverse cast of eccentrically-dressed models emerged from an elevator into a futuristic pink moonscape dotted with boulders.
The car was noticeably absent as was the brand’s iconic leaping-cat icon, replaced by a new “jr” mark and logo type combining upper and lowercase letters to read “JaGUar.”
It was described as “the biggest change in Jaguar’s history – a complete reinvention for the brand,” a company spokesperson shared, adding, “Jaguar is undergoing a complete renaissance from 2025 to emerge as a luxury brand.” Refresh my memory, but hasn’t Jaguar always been a luxury brand?
Jaguar is attempting to speak a new language of luxury but it got lost in translation. “Jaguar is trying to be super cool in an empty and therefore extravagantly visual way by jumping at overt DEI visual language,” observed Dr. Martina Olbert, founder of Meaning. Global and a preeminent authority on brand meaning.
Symbolism Gone
“When you are a brand called Jaguar, there are millions of things – values, images, words, feelings – to tap symbolically. They can’t just change values and strategy because of cultural fads,” Olbert continued.
Brand storytelling is critical to the luxury strategy with the brand’s legacy, myth and symbolism essential elements of a brand’s story. Jaguar effectively jettisoned its mythic symbol on the alter of “Exuberant Modernism.”
Olbert continued, “The old Jaguar logo made the brand look noble, timeless and statuesque – an object of desire. Now it’s misappropriated the visual language of many other retail and consumer goods brands to look more progressive. It is not speaking the language of luxury.”
Luxury Is Not Equitable Or Inclusive
It is appropriate for the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) company to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion within its four walls; however, making DEI the foundation of the brand is off message.
“Jaguar could have kept its legacy and been progressive at the same time. The brand has lost its meaning because they haven’t translated the brand’s meaning and essence to what is relevant to customers today,” Olbert said.
Luxury is and has always been a symbol of status and prestige. Equity isn’t part of the equation nor is inclusion. Luxury brands are exclusive to those who can afford it and who value the heritage, craft, legacy and meaning embedded in the brand.
And while there is something to be said for diversity in luxury – wealth comes in all skin colors – Jaguar is betting its future on battery-electric vehicles (BEV) and abandoning its petrol-fueled legacy that still has adherents young and old.
Some 80% of the U.S. automotive market remains gas powered. Further, sales of BEVs in the U.S. dropped in the third quarter to 7% while hybrid models grew to just over 10% of cars sold, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“Perhaps this will turn out to be a brilliantly executed ploy to switch the customer base for a luxury vehicle brand from middle-aged career professionals to the luxury students and creative artist segment,” wrote Sam Ashworth-Hayes in The Telegraph. Yet for the foreseeable future, wealth resides in the middle-aged career professional segment.
While the company has not announced the price for the new BEV models, they are expected to sell in the £100,000 to £125,000 price range — roughly $125,000 to $150,000 – well over the current average $70,000.
Bold Is Not A Strategy
In the brand relaunch video and the Miami Art Week car reveal, the brand took a self-congratulatory bow to its “fearless creativity, unbound by convention, showing courage and unwavering determination.”
“We’re here to delete ordinary. To go bold,” the brand relaunch video teased as it encouraged viewers to “live vivid” and “break moulds.” While it proclaimed “Copy nothing,” its mould-smashing model seemed to copy Apple’s iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial with its sledgehammer-wielding female runner.
True to its promise, the Type 00 concept car shown in Miami challenges convention. It certainly will attract eyes once it hits the road, but the choice of pastel pink and blue is incongruous with the brand’s call to “livid vivid” and the power symbolized by the Jaguar name and image.
Professor Jean-Noël Kapferer, who’s authored a whole library on luxury brand management, stresses the need for a luxury brand to remain firmly embedded in its heritage and myth to create an aura of mystique and mystery — “Worshipping the heritage. Always go back to your roots, to your cultural heritage,” he writes.
Though missing from the brand relaunch video, the leaping-cat symbol has been retained but relegated it to the door handle of the concept car.
And in Miami, JLR’s chief creative officer, Gerry McGovern emphasized the horizonal line “strikethrough” in the what it calls the “Makers Mark” symbol, effectively obscuring the powerful leaping-cat imagery, rather than bolding it.
Kapferer says luxury brands can reinterpret their heritage in a “surprising, disruptive way,” even being “transgressive to be relevant to today.”
Colors aside, kudos to the company for creating such a disruptive, futuristic and transgressive vehicle, but it failed to explore the powerful myth-making symbolism in the brand’s Jaguar legacy.
Instead of being progressive in its brand imagery, logo type and messaging, Jaguar regressed to the mean, or what The Fashion Law called “blanding,” where brand logos are stripped down to a minimalist aesthetic so they blend in rather than stand out. Recently, many luxury brand logos have gone bland, like Jaguar.
Good Luxe, Jaguar
The reinvention of the Jaguar brand is essentially a “Hail Mary” pass to revive a luxury brand that has been troubled since its days under Ford’s ownership from 1990 to 2008, and now under Tata’s JLR subsidiary.
In fiscal 2020 ending in March of that year, Jaguar sold some 125.8k cars wholesale. In 2020, it dropped to 49.6K and through the first half of 2025, it fell some 40% to 14.2k from 23.9k last year as it halted production of previous models to ramp up production of the new BEV lineup.
It’s going to need a massive amount of good “luxe” for Jaguar to leap back to where it was a mere five years ago. Not only is it asking potential customers to pay upwards of 30% to 50% more for the new models, it is up against a global luxury market potentially slipping into a recession. Bain reports that sales of luxury cars dropped 5% in 2024 at current exchange rates to $612 billion (£579 bilion).
As compelling as the new Jaguar Type 00 looks, the brand’s marketing must do the heavy lifting to get potential buyers into the dealerships and in that regard, it looks like a fail.
“They are not symbolic thinkers, but they have to be to guard and steer their own brand and market value toward the future and be relevant,” Meaning. Global’s Olbert asserted.
And she added, “Sales and profits are tanking, which got Jaguar into this position where they are seemingly abandoning the old world of luxury and making a new progressive gesture.”
Regarding that progressive gesture, Guardian columnist Marina Hyde pointedly wrote, “Hats off to Jaguar’s ‘inclusive’ new branding: now people of all backgrounds won’t buy its cars.”
Time will tell, but I’m thinking Jaguar is better at designing cars than it is in crafting effective luxury branding messages.
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