I have driven Jaguar cars for decades (much to the disgust of many of my former constituents). I have stuck with them because they are reliable, good value and offer an element of luxury.
These days, though, they are no better than BMW, Volvo, Lexus, or Mercedes, but when you feel loyalty to a brand, it’s very difficult to move on to something new.
When I bought my latest Jaguar, I did consider changing. I looked at other brands. I test drove an Alpha Romeo and one or two others but ultimately, I went back to what I knew and could trust, what I felt comfortable with.
I am fairly predictable when it comes to cars. My last four have all been black, with the same interior and the same specifications. Even the sales rep suggested I should perhaps change the colour or the model, but I chose familiarity. We Conservatives don’t like change. So, despite test-driving other brands and other Jaguars I stuck with a Jaguar XF.
As Christmas approaches, we are bombarded with adverts encouraging us to spend and indulge for what used to be a few days but is now weeks or months.
The retailers use their enormous marketing budgets to remind us all how bigoted we are rather than convince us that their products are better value than the competition.
We have all got used to it and most of us just ignore it. But the boards of these large companies believe making all their adverts about virtue signalling is the way forward. And who tells them that?
The expensive, highly paid marketing agencies, of course. People like James Ramsden, the executive creative director at the London design agency Coley Porter Bell, who is responsible for Jaguar’s rebrand. It’s nonsense, and most consumers know it.
When I heard about Jaguar’s new advertising campaign, I knew what I was going to see. Nothing about cars and everything about some parallel universe that almost no one lives in.
I guessed I wouldn’t like it, but unlike the Managing Director of Jaguar, Rawdon Glover, I didn’t feel the need to accuse people of being vile and intolerant, as he did.
It is not unreasonable to ask who Jaguar thinks its audience is. Thanks to Glover I think we know. Or at least we know who isn’t. Rawdon Glover said in a recent interview, “The average age of the Jaguar client is quite old and getting older. We’ve got to access a completely different audience. That audience isn’t centred around people of the demographic of Mr Farage”.
That demographic would be me, and thousands like me. The rebrand of Jaguar is clear. We don’t like our current customers, so we are going to trash them, accuse them of intolerance and tell them to shop elsewhere. It all sounds much like the Democrats in the USA and the Labour Government here in the UK, who don’t much care for the voters unless they think and behave like them.
Jaguar has been my car of choice for decades….I know the REAL culprit behind the new advert – Royston Smith
GB News/Jaguar
I don’t think this virtue-signalling nonsense will last forever, or even much longer. Boards around the world will wake up to it.
Politicians will eventually respond to the electorate and common sense will prevail. Until that happens, businesses like Jaguar will listen to their woke marketing agencies and watch their businesses fail as other brands hoover up their customers.
The question for Tata, Jaguar’s parent company is clear, what is more important to you as a business? Selling cars or getting sucked into the culture war nonsense? Virtue signalling doesn’t sell cars and doesn’t pay the wages.