Jaguar reveals big rebrand – UPDATE: Execs comment on response

November 26: Brand responds to online backlash and ridicule

"We had to break rules and do something that would get us cut thru (sic)", a spokesperson told the BBC this week.

Speaking with the Financial Times, Jaguar brand boss Rawdon Glover said the response online has been filled with "vile hatred" and "a blaze of intolerance". Extreme words, but also not far off the truth, from what we've seen.

“We need to reestablish our brand and at a completely different price point, so we need to act differently," Glover said, insisting that the brand has to “move away from traditional automotive stereotypes".

Some more amusing posts included:

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Specsavers, beloved for its witty and often self-deprecating humour, shared a scribbled version of its own logo.

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Supermarket chain Aldi took aim at Jaguar’s 'Copy Nothing' slogan, remarking: “You sound like our legal team.” If you've ever shopped at Aldi, you get it...

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Startup phone company Nothing, on the other hand, is clearly flattered.

"There's no such thing as bad publicity," the saying goes, and Jaguar appears happy to lean into that thinking this week.

Indeed, as former F1 racer now commentator Martin Brundle said: "I have no idea what this is all about, but it’s genius. Everyone is talking about Jaguar in a moment of time when they’re not actually making cars."

Tesla owner and retroactively inserted 'founder' Elon Musk, who can't resist a minute of the day that doesn't include a tweet of his, posted: "Do you sell cars?" – which, well, touché.

Moving away from Elon and the varied experts of social media, Lee Rolston, an actual design expert and head of branding agency Jones Knowles Ritchie, suggested the response online was predictable – given it has so far brought an unusual logo campaign but no new cars.

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"Don’t ever just launch a logo – when people see a logo they tend to subjectively respond to it. It’s always good to show as much as you can," Rolston told the BBC.

"Unless you want that response. Maybe Jaguar did actually want this kind of response."

He concluded: “They have taken a very brave route - it’s one that very, very few brands ever do take because it’s very risky, but time will tell."

In the meantime, Jaguar has asked people online to "trust and reserve judgement" until its first new concept car is unveiled on December 3.

November 20: Jaguar reveals massive rebrand and multiple new logos

Jaguar has a new logo. Well, three of them, with a super-modern new font, a new take on the classic leaper, and a wholly new monogram. For what?

For its coming all-electric era, that's what.

As it teased early last year and then revealed in some detail this past March, the company has dumped its elderly line-up of combustion models (and the seven-year-old, once revolutionary I-Pace EV) in favour of three new electric models. To start with.

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Carmakers can't just reveal everything at once, of course, and so our first introduction to the new Jaguar is its new JaGUar wordmark and two new "Maker's Marks" – a fresh take on the classic 'leaper' cat, and a new JR monogram that looks ready to seal a royal decree in hot wax.

Up next will be the reveal of an actual car, albeit in Design Vision concept form, on December 3 at the Miami Art Week.

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Until then, we get a new branding manifesto built around the notion of 'Exuberant Modernism', and there's more than a little of Apple's "Think Different" about its reborn "Copy Nothing" mantra.

Did you spy the one with the sledgehammer? Jobs would be flattered, if the 'Think Different' line weren't already another way of saying 'A copy of nothing'.

Like something out of The Hunger Games, the campaign's commercially diverse models are draped in ostentatious statement garb with haircuts to match, leaving one to wonder what this means on the actual product end of it all.

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Time will tell, whether on December 3 or later, although this piece by Car Dealer Magazine UK's James Baggott suggests the brand is all-in on a seemingly Balenciaga-inspired level of extravagance and chic excess.

Baggott writes:

"Jaguar’s passionate team spoke for most of the day about how they plan to ‘delete ordinary’ and ‘live vivid’. Whatever that means…

"In what, at times, felt like a drunken dream, Jaguar personnel walked journalists through its plans to ‘reimagine’ the much-loved brand over the next few years.

"Calling it a ‘complete reset’, McGovern at one point told journalists that his team had ‘not been sniffing the white stuff – this is real’."

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The Germans can have minimalism; Jaguar is here for the hedonistic maximalists? If nothing else, it's probably goodbye to Jaguar's traditional buyers. But, hey, maybe the classic Jaguar buyer is coming into their experimental era?

In all, it's a bold rebrand that looks to the bleeding edge of fashion for its cues. Legacy luxury auto brands have arguably been fairly stagnant in their approach to brand, trapped, as McGovern describes. He says Jaguar has "not been allowed to be unique," but its new look will "stir the emotions once again" – and "make you feel uncomfortable".

Presumably he means uncomfortable in a more encouraging way than the strange feelings that mixed-case JaGUar logo is giving me...