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Will 1 iconic car brand’s UNHINGED new ads kill the business?

James Julian
Auto Intel
Published in
4 min readJan 30, 2025

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Could an ad campaign be so disconnected from its loyal customers that it sinks the entire business?

That’s what some are asking after 1 iconic car brand unleashed what some are calling a ‘woke’ rebranding exercise that seems specifically designed to repel the very people who buy its product.

Oh, and the ads don’t even show the vehicle that the company is selling.

Could an iconic car brand’s weird ad campaign send loyal customers in the opposite direction?
Could an iconic car brand’s weird ad campaign send loyal customers in the opposite direction? (Licensed by the author under the Unsplash+ License)

The car of old white men

If you had to choose an archetype for the kind of person who owns a Jaguar, you might settle on … my dad.

He’s a retired, middle-class white man in his late 60s whose parents were born in the UK and who really embraced the pop culture icons that brought color to his upbringing.

As he neared retirement, dad bought his first Jaguar and has owned one for some 15 years.

And while he is very progressive for his age, I can’t for the life of me figure out what about the following ad would appeal to him in any way:

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James Julian
James Julian

Written by James Julian

James is a journalist, author, investor, and entrepreneur.

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