Carmaker Jaguar looked at PayPal and said hold my beer because they’ve just dropped the strangest rebrand of the year by a mile (pun not intended). The new logo reads like JaGUar and removes what is known as the “Leaper” aka the Jaguar icon, relegating it to being on the cars themselves with a weird new design that looks like scan lines being placed on top. On top of all that, they released a new advert that contains no cars and rather models wearing brightly coloured clothes that you’d see at a pretentious fashion show. It is truly perplexing for a car brand that has been around for decades with such heritage to throw it all away. The chief creative officer of Jaguar Land Rover (parent company) said to reporters the team had “not been sniffing the white stuff — this is real”. This is a downgrade on every single level and I cannot fathom any logical reason for this kind of rebrand, its meant to be a transition to making only fully electric cars, but I’d argue it’d be more effective to build upon the existing well known brand than throw it all away to just come off as out of touch and generic. This looks like something I would’ve made back in SVE in like 2016 lmao.
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jaguar on the other hand doesn’t even look like a car company any more. awful redesign, but they’ve definitely gotten publicity that might be worth the cost of the rebrand. i certainly forgot they existed.
it’s possible they realllyyyy NEEDED this rebrand to not go extinct. in which case, looks like it’s working
The issue with a rebranding that gets attention because of how nonsensical it is will be that everyone will move on from it in a few days, and leaves the brand in a worse place than before without much to show for it. It’s a lot of downsides for a brief stint of attention.
For me the issue with the PayPal rebrand is how it reduces the PP icon out of being a main element, which seems pointless to me since everyone recognises the symbol, Jaguar has done the same by removing the Leaper from the logo and only putting it on cars, it just reduces the most recognisable element that has been attached to the brand for decades that everyone instantly knows is Jaguar or PayPal without additional context.
fair enough. im just wondering if maybe literally nobody is buying jaguar cars, so instead of being a rebranding, its more like them repurposing the company (and purely the name) as a super high luxury auto maker, specifically for people the artsy stuff appeals to
I could totally see that working if the branding was stronger. The new logo and overall look IMO doesn’t target anyone in specific nor signal what Jaguar is trying to realign itself too. I just think the branding is too generic to really strike anyone, especially considering the marketing is trying to sell people on very expensive cars, that are going to be even more expensive now that they’re all fully electric. No hate for wanting to reorient your brand to a new target audience, but I think it could be done way better than what they did.
that’s quite reasonable. i do think that demographic exists, even if we’re both unfamiliar with it. theres people in the world who’ve got the money to spend millions on modern art pieces and watch fashion shows that look like the jaguar teaser, so maybe. but i agree, it does look like a weak rebranding at the moment.