Last November, British sports car and luxury vehicle manufacturer Jaguar kicked off a major rebranding campaign on social media. According to finance website FinBold, the fierce backlash to their very first ad caused shares of Jaguar’s parent company, Tata Motors, to fall on a day when most other prices were rallying on the National Stock Exchange of India.
The widely mocked 30-second spot featured a racially diverse group of genderfluid individuals dressed in garish, brightly colored clothing. As the dour-faced actors emerged from what looked like a bright yellow pod, electronic music played in the background. Messages appeared intermittently on the screen that read: “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” “delete ordinary,” “break moulds,” “copy nothing,” and finally the brand name was displayed. “Jaguar” was written using a combination of lower- and uppercase letters.
It goes without saying that many on social media made the inevitable comparison between the new Jaguar ad and Bud Light’s inexplicable decision in April 2023 to partner with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to promote the sale of a product that has appealed to working-class, ordinary, and decidedly unwoke people for generations. The move led to a boycott and an initial $5 billion decline in market capitalization for Anheuser-Busch, the brand’s parent company.
Noticing that there wasn’t a car to be seen anywhere in the broadly ridiculed ad, Elon Musk asked, “Do you sell cars?”
The company responded to Musk: “Yes. We’d love to show you. Join us for a cuppa in Miami on 2nd December? Warmest regards, Jaguar.”
One commenter suggested they fire their marketing team.
Another came remarkably close to estimating the small fraction of the population that would find the new ad appealing.
Forbes reported at the time that the ad was widely mocked on Instagram as well. “Nearly all the top-liked Instagram comments on Jaguar’s post are critical, with the top comment, liked more than 13,000 times, claiming the company ‘killed a British icon.’” Indeed, they did.
The Daily Mail reported that the man behind Jaguar’s woke rebrand, Santino Pietrosanti, is a “BLM-supporting executive from New York who lives with [his] Scottish husband and their cockapoo Mia.”
According to the Mail, Pietrosanti had spoken at Virgin Atlantic’s “Attitude Awards” event two months earlier and “boasted that Jaguar had ‘established over 15 DEI groups’ as part of a ‘transformative journey.’” Clad in “a spangled dinner jacket over a see-through t-shirt,” he told the crowd that the rebrand would “bring Jaguar back to something truly special.” Here are some excerpts from his remarks:
We’re not just talking about new cars. We are talking about all new ways of thinking and embracing the full spectrum of human potential and creativity.
Because Jaguar has always stood for fearless originality striving to be a copy of nothing. And we believe that every person has the potential to be something unique, something original, and that’s what makes us strong.
And at Jaguar we proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community because we know that originality and creativity thrives in spaces where people are free to be themselves.
We’re passionate about our people and we’re committed to fostering a diverse inclusive and unified culture that is representative of not only the people who use our products but in a society in which we all live.
By 2024, Jaguar had fallen on hard times according to Marketing Week’s Mark Ritson.
Ritson (who sounds like he once drove — and loved — a Jaguar or two) was extremely critical of the company’s rebranding. He wrote:
Oh f***, Jaguar, what have you done?I appreciate things have not been easy in recent years. That your once sparkling reputation has been tarnished by poor reliability and a garage full of often average cars. That you’ve been traded from one parent company to another with barely a thought for your brand. And that when you landed at Tata Motors you had to face the ignominy of being outshone by sister brand Land Rover. For every Jaguar sold last year they shifted six.
He predicted, “That ratio will disappear completely next year, when Jaguar stops producing or selling anything. For the next 12 months, perhaps longer, the company will make nothing but headlines.”
“Jaguar has rebranded when it needed to revitalize,” Ritson explained. “Jaguar’s bizarre new campaign marks a complete overhaul of its positioning, when instead it should have celebrated and updated what once made it great.”
But, according to Ritson, “Jaguar no longer cares about retaining its current customer base. … The company expects to retain only 10% to 15% of its current customer base. Jaguar will shift its targeting to younger, wealthier, more urban shoppers that the company describes as ‘design-minded’ and ‘cash-rich, time-poor.’”
Well, here we are just seven months later and Jaguar sales have not just fallen, they have practically disintegrated. In addition to the rebrand, the company has also transitioned to an all-EV lineup.
The Economic Times is reporting a nearly 98% drop in sales for April from a year earlier. According to the Times, “only 49 Jaguar vehicles were registered in Europe in April 2025, a 97.5% drop compared to 1,961 units in the same month last year. Year-to-date sales between January and April fell 75.1%, with just 2,665 cars sold across the continent.”
Everyone who witnessed the rollout of Jaguar’s rebrand last fall could have predicted the company’s current disaster.
It really is true — go woke, go broke.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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