BRAND NEW Hates BRAND NEW Jaguar Logo. And They Should
There is nothing wrong with updating the logo of a car company once in a while. At Volkswagen, we did it about once every twelve years, to the joy and enrichment of corporate design houses and makers of backlit signage. But did you ever notice that the Volkswagen logo changed? You are not supposed to. The holy grail of logo updating is doing it while the world remains oblivious and thinks it’s the old one.
Jaguar blew that bigtime, says the branding blog BRAND NEW. Boy, did that logo update ever get noticed.
“I have always liked the Jaguar logo, for no particular reason other than it’s well executed, seems well managed, and it’s never tried too hard. With this last version it is trying so hard to be cool and relevant it’s become annoying and, worse, noticeable. Not so much in the jaguar itself, or “Leaper”, which has always featured some kind of metal finishing, but in the typography. Whereas the previous wordmark looked like a luxury, fashion-line brand, the new one has lost all sophistication in exchange for an overly extended, industrial look that cheapens its appearance. It reminds me of the Dodge logo, which I don’t associate with hundred-thousand-dollar cars.”
And don’t get BRAND NEW going on Jaguar’s new print ads:
“The sample of print advertising I found does not help their cause either: I mean, seriously, a sonogram? They seem to have lost track of their audience or what a luxury brand should look and talk like.”
I mean, really, a sonogram? If that kind of a baby would appear on a sonogram, even a Rick Santorum would demand an immediate abortion.
BRAND NEW blames the branding atrocities on Jaguar’s in-house agency Spark44. That agency is so hot, it doesn’t even need a website. Or at least none that is accessible by prospective clients.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Where is Jaguar's sales growth and success coming from? Is it from emerging markets where they may not care so much about traditional styling but more about flash and showing-off? If that's the case, then the logo does a lot better at meeting those qualities (as I would think do their actual cars). I wonder how much a logo change actually matters. Most changes are conservative and not very noticeable, so there's not a lot of examples to go by. The one radical move by an automotive company that comes to mind is replacing the Toyota words on the front of their cars with their pretty nondescript circles and ovals. Hmm, keep your logo as bland as possible so as not to offend during a period of high growth?
I think the new Jaguar logo is a nice update and tasteful. I think marketing people may say it is to close to Dodge, but I don't think that avg Joe would make any sort of correlation.