Demand Curve - Growth Newsletter #225

The Growth Newsletter #225

How to ruin your brand with 1 tweet

Today, we dive into a campaign that will likely be discussed and laughed about for many years.

Let's dive in 🚗

– Neal

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How to ruin your brand with 1 tweet

Insight from us.

When is the last time you ever talked or thought about Jaguar?

Unless you’re an old car nerd, maybe never.

And if you are a car nerd, you maybe talked about the 1960’s E-Type that Enzo Ferrari called “the most beautiful car ever made.”

Or the 90s XJ220, which was (briefly) the fastest production car in the world.

Since then?

Their sales have declined by about 70% in the last 3 years, primarily due to competition releasing much cooler and more modern electric SUVs.

Why get a $100k+ Jaguar SUV when you can get modern electric options like the Model Y (number 1 car in many markets), Model X, Rivian R1S, or Porsche Macan?

It’s generally accepted that their strategy to revive themselves is to go all in on being an electric luxury brand—like all the other luxury car brands currently are.

And then they released this tweet:

In conjunction with this, they:

• Deleted all previous tweets.
• Changed their website to remove all links or references to cars.
  • To be fair, they only did this for a day.

This meme summarizes the most common reaction to this move:

The other common reactions are… not appropriate for this newsletter. But let’s just say people are saying it doesn’t quite match the current culture moment with the clean sweep of Republicans.

I can only speculate the thought process behind this rebrand:

#1. “A new generation of Jaguar owners”

Jaguar mainly appealed to older generations.

So they ask themselves, how can we engage a younger audience?

But here’s the problem:

Is some crazy avant-garde fashionista video featuring meaningless combinations of words going to appeal to young, affluent people? Is that where we are at this cultural moment even?

Releasing this makes Jaguar seem tone-deaf to the current climate.

I think Tesla and Rivian have proven what that audience cares about is:

• Advanced new tech (FSD, auto-everything)
• Goofiness (whoopie cushions, light shows)
• Removal of things people thought were required (gear shifters, knobs, etc)
• Making it a “smart” vehicle (no keys, controllable remotely)
• It being “cool”

Nothing about this rebrand says any of this.

And in the process of desperately trying to appeal to a younger audience, they’ve entirely abandoned and humiliated their core audience of older white dudes who like British things.

Talk about lose-lose.

2. “We need to get people talking about us again”

And boy, have they.

At the time of writing, that tweet has been seen 50M+ times, with ~420k tweets about it in the first 24 hours:

Not to mention countless press mentions or internet creators like me writing newsletters to weigh in on it.

Perhaps they’re leaning into the adage: “No news is bad news.”

This is probably more views and mind share than they’ve ever had. Ever.

But it’s all negative. They’ve become a laughingstock.

Is that what you want when you sell $100k vehicles? For anyone who buys them in the future to be ridiculed by their friends?

And I feel like all the attention is a waste, considering there’s no product. Why not do this in conjunction with a release of a new car? Would that not make the whole thing make sense?

How long are we going to have to wait for an EV that looks sorta like every other luxury EV and in no way matches the weird promise they’ve made?

3. “Copy nothing.”

The saying is ironic.

If their future is to go all-electric, isn’t that what every other car company is scrambling to do right now?

This graph perfectly illustrates what’s going on:

Volvo and Genesis are the only luxury brands currently surviving the rapid shift. Every other brand’s market share is evaporating.

So Jaguar’s solution is to copy Tesla, which every other brand is already doing.

There’s no way they can release anything and not get ridiculed for joining the bandwagon—unless it’s so insane that it’s ridiculed for other reasons.

As Naval points out, this is likely just the beginning: 

“Naval you’re crazy! Google? They aren’t even an automaker!”

What Naval is alluding to is the approaching revolution in the vehicle market. Where cars drive themselves better than the fallible human is able to.

Tesla is planning to release cars with no steering wheel in just a few years. And release an Uber-competitor where nearly every current and future Tesla is able to operate autonomously and earn the owner income when they’re not using it.

Google, which owns Waymo, already has a fleet of cars driving around like Ubers.

Why would you buy a Jaguar when you can buy a Model X or Y that can pay itself off by driving people around?

In the long run, why even spend $100k on a car if there’s a fleet of autonomous vehicles driving around that costs a fraction of an Uber to use?

What should they have done?

What Jaguar probably should have done is copy themselves, as Kevin Dahlstrom says here:

The old 60’s E-Type was a beautiful car.

If Jaguar had remade the old E-Type, it would have been “cool” based on its appearance and legacy alone.

And nostalgia is in more than ever.

Would this save them in the long run, given the impending future? Probably not.

But it would likely give them a spike in sales and make them “cool” again rather than being a bizarre and tone-deaf last attempt before filing for bankruptcy.

What’s the takeaway

If you’re going to rebrand:

• Do it without alienating your core audience.
• Make sure your product is at the heart of the story—not completely absent.
• Make sure it’s relevant to the current cultural climate.
• Make sure the slogan isn’t ironic and doesn’t set you up for failure.
• Find a way to make it interesting to people—which they did!

PSSSST.

The next (and final) cohort of UNIGNORABLE is coming this January. There may or may not be a flash sale for it on a certain upcoming day that's now for digital promotions.

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Neal O'Grady

Justin Setzer