“bUt JoHn, ThE R-wOrD IsN’t NiCe REEEEeEEEEE!!!!”
Ok, unsubscribe then. I didn’t say retarded without good reason.
Moving on:
Jaguar, yes the car company, has been alllllll over the news due to their recent ad campaign.
Their ad was one of the worst ads I ever did see for reasons I’ll break down here.
But if you haven’t seen it - I encourage you to type in “jaguar ad” on YouTube so we’re on the same page here.
Okay, now that you’ve done your homework, let’s talk about the obvious mistakes:
1. The ad had absolutely nothing to do with cars. If you weren’t already familiar with Jaguar, you’d think it was an ad for a makeup brand or weird fashion company.
Now, I don’t think car ads need cars. Almost every car ad is the same carbon copy of another car ad that came before it. You could sell the idea of a car and paint a picture of the new triumphs and adventures said car would help you reach. Granted, it’d be hard to do this without featuring a car, but it’s not always a bad idea to defile your industry’s norms.
Well, this ad certainly defiled the industry norms. Sometimes it is a bad idea too.
Still, I don’t know how weirdos in weird outfits will make me want a car.
2. Go woke, go broke
This one is obvious:
The ad backfired in a tremendous way. Sure, it’s garnered a lot of views. 2.2m in 8 days to be exact. But at what cost?
We may never know because Jaguar has been down bad for a while. They had a near 80% drop in market share since 2017. Even worse is this means they have a “brave and courageous” 0.05% grasp on the market share.
This ad will help get eyeballs on the company. And it already has in a big way.
But not for the right reasons…
3. Their product-market match rivals that of Dylan Mulvaney’s Bud Light
Looks like they took a page from the Disney best practices book: Make it obvious as sin that you hate the guts of your target audience. At least Bud Light backed down - but seems like Jaguar’s gonna double down.
Now, if they’re trying to reach an entirely new demographic, then, well, no, it’s still a shitty ad. More on that in point #5.
4. They claimed to copy nothing (while copying everything)
Along with the new ad came an entirely new rebrand.
One of the lines of copy that appears on the screen as weirdos dance and pose around is “copy nothing.” They don’t even have a sense of irony!
Problem here is, while they’re claiming to copy nothing they’re copying everything from the How to Become a Soulless Corporate Entity for Dummies:
They use the same soulless minimalist fonts, all lower case letters trope, and suck all the personality out of their logo. Jaguar had a personality-filled logo a couple of weeks ago, now they have letters that look no different from Burberry or Pringles or Microsoft.
But the biggest problem with the ad is the last point:
5. They have a fundamental misunderstanding of advertising
There are really only two ways to approach advertising: In a way that garners views and attention or in a way that garners sales.
The best ad campaigns, the ones that are the most profitable, don’t get public praise and applause. They often go entirely unnoticed in the zeitgeist. But they make the company’s wallet fatter than Lizzo before Ozempic.
The worst campaigns, well, they’re the exact opposite.
They get public praise and applause and accolades too for being “creative.” (The irony of a group of some of the least creative people deeming an ad “creative” isn’t lost on me. You can find real creativity in music. Spoiler alert: it ain’t corporate creativity.)
They even win awards!
But they make nobody richer.
And that’s the big problem with this ad:
Its target market isn’t the customers—it’s the journalists who will praise them.
More homework:
Go to google and type in “jaguar's target audience.” You’ll see an article from Forbes. Can you guess the title? (I think you can…)
The title?
“Jaguar Rebrand Is Absolute Genius—Here’s Why”
LOL.
Absolute genius… maybe at killing a company. Not much more.
The article goes on to praise Jaguar because “he’s never seen so much talk about a car rebrand.”
Yeah because most car rebrands aren’t absolute dog poop like this one.
But alas, my point remains:
The point of advertising isn’t praise. It’s profits.
(This insidious mindset also works its way deep into the crevices of ecom brands and Fortune 5000 companies who would sell their kidney, soul, and daughter to get on the Fortune 500 list.)
Anywho:
Want to receive absolutely zero praise for your advertising (while racking up enough cashola to take your family on an extravagant 3-month vacation)?
Hit reply, and let’s chat.
John
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