British luxury carmaker Jaguar is under fire over a colourful new advertising campaign that promotes inclusivity but lacks one key ingredient – any reference to cars.
Released across multiple social media platforms, the 30-second clip features models of varying ages, genders, and races accompanied by phrases such as “live vivid”, “delete ordinary,” and “copy nothing” as a minimal techno soundtrack plays.
Part of Jaguar’s larger rebrand towards electric vehicles after years of sluggish sales, the advertisement has been greeted with confusion and mockery online.
Following the campaign’s launch on Tuesday, many social media users dubbed the rebrand “embarrassing” and damaging to Jaguar’s image as a luxury brand associated with 1960s glamour and James Bond.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk was among those joining the fray, writing “Do you sell cars?” on his platform X, where the advertisement has received more than 90 million views and generated tens of thousands of comments.
On Jaguar’s YouTube channel, one user quipped that the “only thing brave about this ad is to leave the comments section on”.
On the social media forum Reddit, one user wrote that the rebrand was “either marketing genius or brand suicide”.
“This amount of attention Jaguar have generated themselves is huge no matter which social platform you use everyone is talking about Jaguar,” the user posted.
“When they eventually reveal what they’re working on it’s going to generate so much attention I just hope it’s something good.”
Copy nothing. #Jaguar pic.twitter.com/BfVhc3l09B
— Jaguar (@Jaguar) November 19, 2024
Some marketing experts suggested that the tone of the advertisement felt jarring amid the rightward shift in politics and culture epitomised by the re-election of US President Donald Trump and the decline of movements such as Black Lives Matter and #Metoo.
“This is like when movies used to come out in other countries a year after they were done showing in Hollywood. The vibe of this rebrand might have worked in 2021, but to drop this in late 2024 only emphasises the reasons for Jaguar’s brand decline in the first place: it’s outdated and confusing,” Lulu Cheng Meservey, founder of the strategic communications firm Rostra, wrote on X.
While the corporate world rushed to burnish its social justice credentials amid the rise of movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter in the 2010s, many companies have more recently sought to distance themselves from progressive causes.
The shift follows a number of cases of advertising campaigns with progressive themes generating backlash.
Anheuser-Busch InBev saw its North American sales plunge $1.4bn last year following a partnership between Bud Light and transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
In the United Kingdom, calls to boycott the pharmacy chain Boots are under way over a Christmas advertisement featuring a Black Mrs Claus, played by British actress Adjoa Andoh, and LGBTQ elves packing presents while Santa Claus is fast asleep.
In the corporate boardroom, debate about the future of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes is also under way.
Home improvement chain Lowe’s, tractor maker John Deere, motorcycle giant Harley-Davidson, Ford and Brown Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, have all reversed their DEI policies over the past year.
Other companies such as MasterCard, Cigna Health and JPMorgan have said their DEI efforts will continue.
For Jaguar, a brand long associated with wealthy older men, the biggest problem with the advertisement is that its target audience is unclear, Cheng Meservey said.
“If it’s trying something new, it’s unclear who it’s for,” Cheng Meservey said on X. “If they’re going to abandon the male audience, they should replace it with a more lucrative audience, and it’s unclear who they’re going for here. Vegans?”
Jaguar did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment, but responded to its critics on X, saying that, “All will be revealed.”
Holding company Jaguar Land Rover stopped selling new Jaguar models in the UK this week ahead of its planned transition to electric-only models in 2026, which will see the company invest hundreds of millions of pounds in its UK manufacturing plants.
The carmaker, which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, said the move would “create some breathing space” ahead of its relaunch, which was announced in 2021.