Even those who have never considered purchasing a Jaguar are confused by the brand’s latest relaunch, which has been getting attention for all the wrong reasons. Viewers are saying the luxury car brand has gone woke and in doing so, has destroyed more than 100 years of legacy.
Some thought the colorfully bizarre, car-free car commercial and the introduction of the “Pink batmobile” electric concept car this month came out of nowhere. However, the descent into madness at Jaguar has been going on for decades, even if most people weren’t paying attention.
There may be no exact date to point to in terms of steering this British brand in a new direction. But it may have started around 2002 when brand reps conducted a survey and determined that they should be marketing to gay and lesbian car buyers who at the time commanded $450 million of purchasing power in the United States, as The Advocate reported at the time.
“[LGBT buyers] spend more money on luxury cars, and they have more money to spend,” Jaguar spokesman Simon Sproule said. “They are very loyal to brands and organizations that talk to them in a way that is relevant.”
“In recent years, Jaguar has targeted gay consumers on a smaller scale and found the brand is very appealing to this segment,” Jaguar North America marketing vice president George Ayres agreed.
Their website offers further clues to the brand’s progressive shift, touting that since 2016 Jaguar has been “a proud partner to the world’s biggest LGBTQ+ media brand, Attitude Magazine.”
The brand also sponsors Attitude Magazine’s big annual event, the Attitude Awards, claiming to be the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. In 2019, in partnership with Attitude Magazine, the brand launched an online mini-series – Jag Race – featuring four drag queens, which happened to coincide with the popular American reality show “Ru Paul’s Drag Race” premiering on the BBC.
Jaguar Land Rover UK marketing director Anthony Bradbury told media outlet The Drum that their goal was, “challenging stereotypes of what an automotive campaign can be.”
“The industry has a stereotypically masculine image, so it’s important we use our platform to challenge that perception and reflect the diversity not only in our customer base but our employee network,” he said of the campaign, also noting that the Jaguar Land Rover Pride community had more than 450 members.
Mike Buckley, head of partnerships at Attitude, said he’s been thrilled with the collaboration with Jaguar. He said “Jag Race” is just one example of the brand’s “commitment to the LGBTQ+ audience.”
“They’ve been a dream partner since the start, committed to providing bespoke content for our audience,” Buckley said. “A number of concepts were initially presented by us to them but they wanted to be even more fearless than we thought they did. So Jag Race was their idea which we developed, produced and distributed for them.”
Also in 2019, Jaguar partnered with Queer Screen to present its 26th Mardi Gras Film Festival. Their “Fit for a Queen” campaign to promote the festival had the intention of “celebrating individualism and queer storytelling.”
Mark Cameron, managing director of Jaguar Land Rover Australia, said of the sponsorship, “Inclusion is integral to the way that we do business at Jaguar and we recently established the Jaguar Land Rover PRIDE LGBTQI network in the UK. We are excited to celebrate creativity, equality and diversity with the incredible line-up of LGBTQI talent and films in this year’s festival, and of course to have some fun at our Jaguar Service Centre.”
There’s more. In 2022, Jaguar highlighted “the voices of two queer creatives” to discuss topics like representation and not caring what people think. Layton Williams discussed being cast as the first black Billy Elliot cast in a stage production of a show. “As queer people, sometimes we have to… well, you have to work a little bit harder sometimes. Well, I feel I have.”
The work that Jaguar started in 2002 and has been dutifully working toward ever since – to turn the brand into an homage to LGBTQ ideals – should not have been a surprise at all. During an appearance at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards in October, Santino Pietrosanti, UK Brand Director at Jaguar Land Rover, said the company rebrand was exactly what it looked like.
“We’re on a transformative journey of our own. Driven by a belief in diversity, inclusion, creativity, policy and, most importantly, action. We’ve established over 15 DEI groups such as Pride, which are here tonight, and Women in Engineering and Neurodiversity Matters,” Pietrosanti said at the time.
“We’ve launched major policy revisions such as transitioning at work to drive equity and support for our communities, embracing individuality as our superpower,” he continued. “We’re not just talking about new cars. We are talking about all new ways of thinking and embracing the full spectrum of human potential and creativity. Because Jaguar has always stood for fearless originality, striving to be a copy of nothing. And we believe that every person has the potential to be something unique, something original, and that’s what makes us strong.”
He said, “At Jaguar we proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community because we know that originality and creativity thrives in spaces where people are free to be themselves.”
Despite Bud Light’s billion dollar advertising train wreck and several high-profile companies shying away from hot button social issues and abandoning DEI initiatives, Jaguar is all in for progressive values and unashamed to say so. Time will tell if that works out for them.
