Back in 2002, when my whiny petulance and insistence on greater creative control grew beyond its rightful limitations, I was let go from TBWA Chiat/Day. "We got quit", as my former partner John Shirley would put it.
A mere 4 weeks later I was hired to be the Group Creative Director on Jaguar at their AOR agency, Y&R. In Irvine, only 56 miles south on the 405 from my house. In other words, Jaguar is a brand I'm intimately familiar with.
Or, at least was.
The big knock on the new "brand film" that is being shared in digital ad circles is how they neglected their distinctive British heritage. Instead they decided to put on a haute couture fashion show (not even sure I'm using that term correctly) with a mish mosh of actors and an even mishier, moshier ejaculation of colors.
I assume this appeals to someone. Just not sure it appeals to luxury/performance auto buyers willing to shell out 6 digits for a car that must compete with BMW or Mercedes Benz.
It is painstakingly substance free. And it's difficult to contain my contempt for the "work."
Though to be fair, much of today's automotive advertising is geared towards the Tik Tok crowd. Apologies to George T., but it harkens back to a point he has made, ad infinitum, "give me a reason to investigate or even buy this damn car."
They don't. The brass at Jaguar, a conclave of stuffy old white men never did. And any urging on our part to revisit the brand's DNA and legacy as maker of the world's sexiest, sleekest cars, fell on deaf ears that were bursting with tufts of white hair.
But it's not like my boss John Doyle, one of the world's premier art directors, and I, didn't try. I fished this out of my vault of dead ads that never went anywhere...
This double page newspaper ad originated from the strategy department who told us that when people actually drive the car they are 17.3% more likely to buy it. Don't quote me on the statistic. So we tried to beat people to the punch and recreate the feeling of a test drive to spark their interest. The designers and engineers who built the car would have loved the way we paid homage to their innovation and their British heritage.
The muckety mucks would have no such thing.
Weeks later we came back with ads that were not so copy heavy but still chock full of a certain Jaguar-ness. And they were distinctively art directed in the manner that made Doyle a legend and accounted for his panoply of appearances in all the best award annuals.
I'll never forget the stuffy old twat who, while I was reading the copy out loud to a room full of suit wearing execs, told me, "next campaign, please."
He did say please.
The CMO and the CEO at the time were however intrigued with a campaign brought in by our NY team, a bunch of ass-kissing hacketty hacks. Or maybe they were from London. Who knows, who cares? They skinned the new models in Jaguar-like paint -- see the photo above. And they wanted to buy a song from Fleetwood Mac, "you can go your own way."
Get it?
There was no accounting for taste then. And apparently there is no accounting for taste now.
Meow!
PS. why would you not want to lean into this?
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