British luxury automaker’s advertising campaign features models of varying ages, genders and races – but no cars. British luxury carmaker Jaguar is under fire over a colourful new advertising campaign that promotes inclusivity but lacks one key ingredient – any reference to cars. Released across multiple social media platforms, the 30-second clip features models of varying ages, genders, and races accompanied by phrases such as “live vivid”, “delete ordinary,” and “copy nothing” as a minimal techno soundtrack plays.
Part of Jaguar’s larger rebrand towards electric vehicles after years of sluggish sales, the advertisement has been greeted with confusion and mockery online. Following the campaign’s launch on Tuesday, many social media users dubbed the rebrand “embarrassing” and damaging to Jaguar’s image as a luxury brand associated with 1960s glamour and James Bond. Tech billionaire Elon Musk was among those joining the fray, writing “Do you sell cars?” on his platform X, where the advertisement has received more than 90 million views and generated tens of thousands of comments.
On Jaguar’s YouTube channel, one user quipped that the “only thing brave about this ad is to leave the comments section on”. On the social media forum Reddit, one user wrote that the rebrand was “either marketing genius or brand suicide”. “This amount of attention Jaguar have generated themselves is huge no matter which social platform you use everyone is tal.
