Everyone said Jaguar’s new identity was a disaster. I think it worked exactly as intended.
The internet melted down before the brand had even revealed its first car under the new mark.
Late 2024: Jaguar drops the leaping cat for a geometric, lowercase wordmark and an entirely new visual language. The internet lost it. “Confusing,” said the critics. “Directionless,” said the designers.
Here’s what nobody was saying: Jaguar wasn’t talking to its old customers anymore. It was positioning for an all-electric future, chasing a completely different buyer — younger, wealthier, more fashion-forward. This rebrand wasn’t built for people who already owned a Jaguar. It was built for people who’d never once considered it.
The strategy: become a fully electric luxury brand by 2026, and step away from traditional dealership culture altogether. “Copy Nothing.” “Exuberant Modernism.” Not a visual refresh — business repositioning, with every typographic and campaign decision built to make the shift impossible to ignore.
Whether people liked the aesthetics was almost beside the point. Did people hate it? Plenty did. Did it earn global coverage, debate, and attention at basically zero media cost? Absolutely. The launch made people stop, question, and pay attention.
The verdict isn’t today’s comments — it’s whether tomorrow’s buyers see Jaguar differently because of it.
Jaguar didn’t redesign its logo. It repositioned its business.
WHAT CLUNK® THINKS
Strong repositioning almost always creates resistance because it challenges the old perception before it earns the new one. The old identity was Jaguar’s heritage. The new one is its future. Judge both by the same yardstick and you’ll miss the strategy entirely.
The brands that lead markets rarely optimise for applause today. They optimise for relevance later.
How does it land?
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