Jaguar Hits the Reset Button and Emerges as a Completely New Brand

Like Twitter’s transformation into X, Jaguar’s new brand stands as one of the most dramatic rebrands we’ve seen, not just this year, but possibly in the entire decade.

Jaguar has launched a new brand strategy and identity, leaving behind everything that defined them: the iconic logo, the British heritage, the traditional fuel-powered cars, the current market positioning, the pricing strategy, and even their loyal customer base.

This complete rebrand represents a clear shift from the past, moving into a new era of ultra-luxury electric vehicles with a brand identity that is artistic, fashionable, sustainable, innovative, and inclusive.

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Quick Facts About Jaguar

About the brand. Jaguar is a renowned brand specializing in high-performance sports cars and luxury vehicles. The brand operates under the umbrella of Jaguar Land Rover, a British multinational automaker based in Whitley, Coventry, England, which in turn is owned by Tata Motors.

History and turning points. Before we jump into Jaguar’s new brand strategy, let’s take a moment to go over some important pivotal moments from the brand’s history:

• 1922: Williams Lyons founded the Swallow Sidecar Company, which marked the beginning of Jaguar’s business.
• 1945: The company’s name is changed from SS Cars to Jaguar Cars.
• 1966: Jaguar merges with the British Motor Corporation, leading to a series of mergers and nationalizations that result in British Leyland.
• 1984: Jaguar is spun off British Leyland and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
• 1989-90: Ford acquires Jaguar Cars, and later buys Land Rover in 2000.
• 2008: The Indian multinational automotive company Tata Motors acquires Jaguar and Land Rover, merging them into Jaguar Land Rover.
• 2021: Jaguar announces that it aims to make all its cars fully electric by 2025

A New Strategic Direction For Jaguar Land Rover

Navigating market uncertainties in 2021-2023

According to Jaguar Land Rover’s Annual Report 2024, the company has faced significant challenges from 2021 to 2023, including semiconductor shortages, inflation, an energy crisis, and geopolitical instability. These extraordinary global pressures constrained the business for three years.

Despite these challenges, the company has improved operational performance and delivered better financial results from the financial year 2023 onwards.

Unveiling Jaguar Land Rover’s Reimagine Strategy

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is following its Reimagine Strategy, which lays out “a new vision of becoming a carbon net zero business by 2039”. The strategy is built around four main pillars:

• Modern luxury: “Where design philosophy meets sustainability, innovation and exceptional client experience to create desirability“
• Electrification: “Ushering in a new era of sustainable, luxury vehicles, our unwavering commitment lies in the electrification of our house of brands”
• Sustainability: “Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, driving us to redefine the future of responsible excellence across our footprint”
• Enterprise: “Our journey to realize a sustainability‑driven vision of exceptional brands and products through a transparent and ethical end-to-end supply base“

The company has chosen the House Of Brands brand architectureBrand architecture defines the role of each brand and acts as a guideline for the interrelationship between the brands in your organization. model to organize its four brands: Range Rover, Defender, Discovery, and Jaguar. The aim? To elevate the unique features and status of these British brands.

Going Electric and Pausing Jaguar sales until 2026

Jaguar is shifting its strategy to offer fully electric cars only. To meet this goal, the company chose to pause the sales of new Jaguar cars in the UK until at least 2026. This means it won’t be possible for people to get a new Jaguar car in the UK until the launch of the new electric-only vehicles in 2026.

In the US, the situation is similar. Car dealers will be able to sell the remaining 2024 models, and after that, everyone will need to wait until 2026 for the new electric Jaguars to arrive.

The Reveal of a Completely Reimagined Brand

After almost 100 years in the car industry, Jaguar is reinventing its brand completely.

Their new strategy, unveiled on November 18, 2024, involves a complete makeover to stand out in the electric vehicle market. This includes a change in almost every aspect of the marketing mix, a new brand identity, and a new positioning strategy.

Let’s see what this looks like in practice.

New cars, new price, new brand

As of 2026, Jaguar cars will be completely different from the ones we know today.

According to Motor1, the new models will be exclusively electric, bigger, more exclusive, and more expensive. “There will only be three models, and the first will be a GT saloon over five meters long. The cars will be exclusively electric and have a range of around 435 miles, but those who buy them will not do so for this reason but “because of the emotions they arouse.”

While current Jaguar models start at $50,000-60,000, their new lineup will be priced at roughly double that amount—marking a significant shift in their pricing strategy.

The changes in the brand’s products and pricing appear to be at the core of the need for a complete brand transformation aimed at attracting the right audience and conveying this new, elevated stage of luxury.

“Exuberant modernism” as a new brand philosophy

Jaguar is returning to its roots by embodying the “copy nothing” ethos from Jaguar’s founder, William Lyons.

The brand is redefining its essence by returning to its originality ethos while adding the concept of exuberant modernism. This approach reconnects with the founder’s vision for the brand while ensuring it stays relevant to a contemporary audience.

“Jaguar has its roots in originality. Sir William Lyons, our founder, believed that ‘A Jaguar should be a copy of nothing’.

Our vision for Jaguar today is informed by this philosophy. New Jaguar is a brand built around Exuberant Modernism. It is imaginative, bold and artistic at every touchpoint. It is unique and fearless.”

Professor Gerry McGovern OBE, Chief Creative Officer for Jaguar Land Rover

A new brand positioning strategy targeting a completely new audience

Jaguar is repositioning itself as “fearless, exuberant, and compelling“. This drastic new positioning strategy aims to capture an entirely new audience, more likely to purchase the future electric cars.

While the brand was famous for targeting a very masculine affluent audience, the carmaker now aims to attract a younger, “design-minded” and “cash rich, time poor” audience.

According to the head of the Jaguar brand, the company is expecting to let go of most of its current customers. “We assume that 10-15% of our current Jaguar customers will follow us, so relatively few”, said Rawdon Glover, head of the Jaguar brand, in an interview with Motor1.

A new brand identity that abandons its roots

Besides returning to the founder’s “copy nothing” ethos, Jaguar doesn’t refer to its British origins and nearly 100 years of heritage. The brand is embracing a new era and moving away from its masculine, British, prestigious, and more traditional heritage.

The new strategy focuses on the new brand’s personality, which is defined as imaginative, bold, artistic, unique, and fearless. Jaguar now aims to embody originality and creativity and boldly inspire its new audience.

While the brand is clearly embracing sustainability as part of its business strategy, the identity revolves around the concepts of modern luxury, innovation, and desirability.

“To bring back such a globally renowned brand, we had to be fearless.

Jaguar was always at its best when challenging convention. That ethos is seen in our new brand identity today and will be further revealed over the coming months.

This is a complete reset. Jaguar is transformed to reclaim its originality and inspire a new generation.

I am excited for the world to finally see Jaguar.”

Rawdon Glover, Managing Director, Jaguar

An exuberant new visual identity

Jaguar has just unveiled a new visual identity that has nothing to do with the previous one.

The most drastic change is probably the new brand imagery, showing diverse models dressed in high fashion and colorful clothes. The look and feel are edgy, futuristic, fashionable, and inclusive. Even more surprisingly, the ads featured no Jaguar car, only people. This is a considerable disruption from Jaguar’s past. The film and print ads also feature the brand’s values, such as “delete ordinary”, “create exuberant”, “break moulds”, and “live vivid”.

The use of bold and vibrant colors is a new building block of Jaguar’s visual identity. The new color palette reflects the brand’s new association with the art world. It is inspired by the primary colors (yellow, red, and blue) and will be presented with texture or movement.

Jaguar’s new logo is also a surprising move. The company chose to swap the previous font with a minimalist, modern, and geometric wordmark, mixing upper and lower case as it reads “JaGuar.”

The company removed the iconic “leaper” representing a jumping jaguar from the logo and reimagined it as a new modern “maker mark”. By leaping forward, it is a “representation of excellence and hallmark of the brand”.

Jaguar now features a new monogram combining the ‘J’ and the ‘R’, described as a “code for expression and a signifier of a completed work”.

The Public’s Reaction So Far

This incredibly bold rebrand is not surprisingly feeding an extensive discussion and debate online.

Not the Jaguar rebrand being too abstract for the masses. This looks like an old Benetton ad.
Where’s the car? The prestige. The luxury. pic.twitter.com/iuCqemB8li

— Monet (@SocialMonet) November 20, 2024

Some celebrities like Elon Musk commented on the rebrand, and Jaguar instantly answered:

Yes.
We'd love to show you. Join us for a cuppa in Miami on 2nd December?
Warmest regards,
Jaguar

— Jaguar (@Jaguar) November 19, 2024

When asked how they felt about Jaguar’s new logo, the German newspaper Bild’s audience voted “Creepy! This no longer has anything to do with Jaguar” at 93% amongst over 17,800 participants.

On a Reddit discussion, some people said they enjoyed the new logo and rebrand, and one user, for example, said: “I love the new logo and imo, I believe people are overreacting”.

Most users, however, are showing a hostile reception towards the new logo, with comments such as “it’s giving organic, ethically sourced health supplements vibe”, or even “The capital G is driving me crazy”. Someone else commented, “What they’ve ended up with is a name that no longer matches their identity. Jaguar says speed, power, sex. The new brand is about creativity and social consciousness. It no longer makes sense.”

A Consistent Response From Jaguar’s PR Team

While some brands like Tropicana (2009) and Gap (2010) have abandoned their rebranding efforts after facing backlash, the situation here is different.

By launching the new strategy, Jaguar deliberately aims to create a clear break from its past and appears to have anticipated public reactions.

The brand’s PR team is actively engaging with comments on X, confidently maintaining its stance through statements such as “The story’s still unfolding – stay tuned”, “This is not the end. This is the new beginning”, and “Quite the opposite. This is a renaissance.”

What We Think About Jaguar’s Rebrand

So, what’s our take on this bold rebrand?

This rebrand is one of the most significant in the history of luxury automotive. While most car manufacturers opt for subtle evolution, Jaguar has chosen complete reinvention. And in a world where brands increasingly look alike, it’s refreshing to see a major company like Jaguar daring to break the rules and completely shift its image.

Jaguar’s product strategy and commitment to transforming its entire range into fully electric vehicles will strengthen their brand image and create a positive environmental impact — a crucial consideration in today’s economy.

However, the question isn’t whether the rebrand is bold but whether it’s as well strategically sound.

Drastic rebrands usually work well for brands that have nothing to lose. But Jaguar was starting to do better and still had a base of loyal customers. That’s why we deem Jaguar’s rebrand to be too extreme, involving too many risks:

• Losing distinctive brand assets that took decades to build
• Introducing a completely new identity that disconnects entirely from the brand’s origins and heritage
• Abandoning their current brand positioning and customer base without a proven alternative
• Shifting to a higher price point (£100,000+) without established credibility
• Prioritizing fashion-luxury codes within an automotive market
• Not including the actual product in current communications

While updating the brand was needed, Jaguar had other options. They could have kept their core brand values while modernizing, moved upmarket step by step to retain current customers, used their rich heritage to support higher pricing, or tested the ultra-luxury waters with a separate and new sub-brand.

In terms of implementation, the brand’s communication strategy authentically reflects its values of being fearless, unique, exuberant, and artistic. While its unconventional approach may seem shocking compared to typical automotive industry standards, it remains completely aligned with the brand’s new goals and envisioned identity.

What’s also particularly intriguing to us is the clear shift in gender positioning. By breaking with its traditionally masculine image and adopting feminine and diversity codes — through softer lines in the logo, a fashionable and artistic visual identity, and inclusiveness — Jaguar appears to be deliberately targeting a feminine luxury audience and underrepresented groups.

While risky in the automotive sector, this strategy could drive significant results by differentiating the brand from other major players. Meanwhile, customers seeking a more traditional masculine appeal can still find their match with the sister brand Land Rover. This might also explain the company’s emphasis on its new House of Brands architecture.

Overall, three key factors will determine success:

1. Product excellence: the new electric vehicles must be exceptional to justify the ultra-luxury positioning and deliver on the brand’s promise
2. Market timing: the ultra-luxury EV segment might be crowded by their 2026 launch
3. Execution: Jaguar must manage to navigate the initial adverse reactions strategically, quickly build credibility in the ultra-luxury market, and create a loyal following among its new target audience

The December strategy reveal will be crucial — not just for what’s announced, but to better understand how Jaguar plans to bridge the gap between its current brand image and its ambitious future.

The brand’s success will require exceptional execution, not just exceptional vision.