Our thinking

Quick start or engine failure?

6 December, 2024

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or (very understandably) ignoring the news for the last two weeks, you’ll have seen or heard about Jaguar’s re-brand.  

Given the amount of attention (primarily negative) received, we worry there is a risk that strategy and execution are getting muddled. Having faced significant financial challenges in recent years and deemed a brand of the past, Jaguar is focusing on modernisation and electrification to capture the imagination (and £s) of a new younger demographic. As staunch believers in the power of transforming business to transform the world, we are fully behind Jaguar’s strategic vision.

But the execution of both the bold branding and the prototype Type 00 car don’t seem to have delivered. Considering that originality and boldness is at the forefront of Jaguar’s new brand strategy, this was a time for blue-sky thinking to reimagine urban electric driving. Besides the striking (if not somewhat familiar) design, the launch was light on technological detail and heavy on buzzwords.

In the same week, Mercedes Benz demonstrated how to execute a vision successfully, releasing details about its very real research projects to reduce the environmental impact of every component and material as far as possible, including solar paint, which could legitimately make EV anxiety a thing of the past. But they failed to conjure up the same hysteria that Jaguar has. And we believe you need both to truly move the automotive industry into the electrical age.

By Budd Nicholson