In an incident that has added yet more fuel to the fire of Jaguar’s destruction, the managing director of the formerly posh car brand has taken to defending its decision to go woke and broke with a very odd advertisement it released recently, declaring that the reasons for the ads poor reception are hate and intolerance.
As background, e at The American Tribune, noting that the ad was odd in that it not only didn’t feature a single car but had nothing to do whatsoever with auto manufacturing, sales, or even aesthetics, and that it got utterly eviscerated on free-speech-friendly social media platform X (formerly Twitter), reported:
In what might go down as a Bud Light-tier bad move, British car manufacturer Jaguar released a horribly out of touch, woke ad that horrified viewers on X (formerly Twitter), and led to immense backlash in the comments section, with the carmaker savaged for what critics contended was an obscenely woke and weird ad.
The ad, “Copy Nothing,” features no cars. Instead, it consists entirely of an ensemble of oddly attired individuals with shocking makeup and haircuts. Like many woke advertisements, it appears to be meant to stun normal people as a way of building more social cache for the brand. It just led to much anger and mockery online, however.
So, with the backlash building online, Jaguar managing director Rawdon Glover sat down for an interview with the Financial Times and defended the branding relaunch, declaring that it was great and was only treated in such a manner because of “a blaze of intolerance” from the general public on social media. He added that the ad wasn’t meant to be “woke.”
Speaking to the Financial Times in the interview, Glover, who mainly tried to paint the average reception as “very positive,” complained about what he characterized as the “level of vile hatred and intolerance” surrounding it. Explaining why the car company released such an odd ad, he said, “If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand.”
Then, saying that the ad was meant to talking “traditional automotive stereotypes,” whatever that means, Glover added, “We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently. We wanted to move away from traditional automotive stereotypes.” He didn’t specify how the ad shows the new price point of the vehicles.
He added to that by saying that Jaguar, though it doesn’t want to leave behind all of its past, wealthy customers, now wants to “attract a new customer base,” saying, “This is not a depiction of how we think our future customers are. We don’t want to necessarily leave all of our customers behind. But we do need to attract a new customer base.”
A senior advertising executive who previously worked with Jaguar agreed with the criticism of the new ad, telling the Financial Times, “You can destroy a brand in 30 seconds that took a lifetime to build. Strong brands reinvent themselves but always remain true to the core of their DNA. For luxury brands in particular, authenticity is key and this fails the test.”
In a statement on the ad to Fox News Digital, Jaguar said, “Our brand relaunch for Jaguar is a bold and imaginative reinvention and as expected it has attracted attention and debate. As proud custodians at such a remarkable point in Jaguar’s history we have preserved iconic symbols while taking a dramatic leap forward. The brand reveal is only the first step in this exciting new era and we look forward to sharing more on Jaguar’s transformation in the coming days and weeks,” the statement said.
Watch Greg Gutfeld torch the weird ad here:
Featured image credit; By Marktee1 – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=146545434
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