Everyone — except, it seems, the top executives at the iconic British sports car and luxury vehicle maker Jaguar Land Rover — saw this coming. According to The Telegraph, Gerry McGovern, the chief creative officer behind Jaguar’s controversial “woke” rebrand, was reportedly “escorted from his office” on Monday after more than two decades with the company.
McGovern’s inglorious dismissal came just days after PB Balaji, the former chief financial officer of Tata Motors, which owns JLR, took over as chief executive officer.
The company’s previous CEO, Adrian Mardell, who oversaw the rebrand, announced his retirement in August after JLR reported a 97.5% plunge in sales.
You may recall the surreal ad that launched the disastrous rebrand in November 2024 — the one everyone mocked but no one forgot.
The 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 were intermittently displayed on the screen that read: create exuberant, live vivid, delete ordinary, break moulds, copy nothing, and finally the new brand appeared. “Jaguar” was written using a combination of lower- and uppercase letters.
Strangely missing from the ad — were cars. This prompted Elon Musk to ask, “Where are the 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.”
Before refreshing his reader’s memories of this unfortunate ad, blogger Ace of Spades amusingly wrote: “Think different you guys. … Challenge everything you guys. … Cut your genitals off you guys. … In case you have managed to forget this Gender Apocalypse Meth Nightmare, here’s your reminder.”
Ace accurately described McGovern as “the Chief Creative Officer who oversaw the effort to turn Jaguar into a trans brand.”
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The Telegraph reported:
[McGovern] was also the main creative force behind last year’s radical rebrand of Jaguar that aimed to shift the marque away from its traditional “Jag Man” image towards ultra-wealthy customers.A “Type 00” concept for the carmaker’s first electric model – unveiled at an international art show last December – was sleek, futuristic-looking and coloured in shades of bright pink and blue.It invited unflattering comparisons to the FAB 1 car driven by Lady Penelope in Thunderbirds and Barbie’s screaming pink convertible.An advert for the rebrand, featuring a cast of androgynous-looking models but no cars, was also criticised for being too “woke”, with Nigel Farage and Donald Trump among those who attacked the campaign.
Suffice it to say, the rebrand was not simply a flop, but one of the most spectacular misfires in modern marketing history.
The backlash was immediate — and fierce.
One X user told the company to fire its marketing team.
Another suggested JLR “must have hired the marketing director who got fired from Bud Light!”
The following user slammed Jaguar’s new logo:
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 who produced the ad, Santino Pietrosanti, was a “BLM-supporting executive from New York who lives with [his] Scottish husband and their cockapoo Mia.”
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But, rather than course correct, Rawdon Glover, the managing director of the Jaguar brand, brushed off the criticism as “vile hatred and intolerance.” He told the Financial Times, “We need to re-establish our brand and at a completely different price point so we need to act differently.”
The Telegraph noted that he has “repeatedly” supported the rebrand, telling ABC News earlier this year:
We’re not looking for everybody to say, ‘That’s nice.’I think great design does polarize, whether that’s in fashion or architecture or whatever else.So having the confidence to say this is what we think the 21st century Jaguar should look like and then sticking to that is very important.
Perhaps a few car designs were merely polarizing — the Pontiac Aztek, the Chrysler PT Cruiser convertible, and even the DeLorean come to mind.
But the new Jaguar models could hardly be defended as “great design.” The drastic departure from the sleek, elegant lines that once defined the brand made the new models nearly unrecognizable. In abandoning the very styling that built its mystique, Jaguar seemed to lose not just its identity, but its appeal.
The rebrand didn’t just confuse consumers — it alienated them.
This marketing blunder — extraordinary in both its predictability and its repercussions — is poised to take its place among the era’s most instructive corporate missteps, a case study future business students will analyze for years.
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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