No Mercy / No Malice: Killing the Cat

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0:01:10 For over 30 years, XPRIZE has been the global leader
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0:01:56 I’m Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice.
0:02:01 Jaguar is giving us more proof that the era of brands
0:02:05 is over, killing the cat, as read by George Hahn.
0:02:13 Jaguar, a brand that’s been in a coma for years,
0:02:16 is trying to wake up, and it’s gasping.
0:02:20 The car-free copy-nothing-kickoff video
0:02:24 and the rollout of a pink concept EV at Art Basel, Miami,
0:02:27 have inspired well-earned mockery.
0:02:30 The launch rivaled Elon’s WeRobot event
0:02:34 for the all-chip-no-sauce-of-product launch of 2024.
0:02:38 Getting attention is key to any marketing campaign,
0:02:41 so mission accomplished, sort of.
0:02:47 Tata Motors, which owns Jaguar and its stable-mate Land Rover,
0:02:49 has also succeeded in further eroding
0:02:53 what’s left of Jaguar’s brand equity.
0:02:57 Jaguar trashed its iconic logo, all its current models,
0:03:02 and its traditional promise of speed, power, and elegance.
0:03:06 In their place is an uninspired and generic brand mark,
0:03:09 a concept model that will never be put into production,
0:03:12 and an incomprehensible promise,
0:03:13 something about good-looking people,
0:03:16 bright colors, and exotic haircuts.
0:03:19 A lot has been said about this HBRK study
0:03:21 that’s writing itself,
0:03:23 including some predictable culture war bullshit
0:03:26 about Jaguar having gone woke.
0:03:28 Most of this misses the larger point,
0:03:31 which is that Jaguar’s move is further proof
0:03:33 that the brand age is over.
0:03:38 Just as doctors have a Hippocratic oath,
0:03:42 chief marketing officers ought to have a similar pledge.
0:03:44 First, do no harm.
0:03:48 I’ve advised lots of big consumer brands
0:03:49 about their marketing,
0:03:53 and I’ve noticed that CMOs recognize their days are numbered
0:03:55 and are desperate to show visible motion,
0:03:58 whether it makes sense or not.
0:04:01 Often that activity, devoid of progress,
0:04:04 means spending lots of money on a new agency
0:04:06 stocked with sharply dressed young people
0:04:08 who will host events giving awards
0:04:10 to whoever spent the most money
0:04:13 across the advertising industrial complex.
0:04:15 I’m honored to be part of this brand’s history,
0:04:18 and I’m shocked how well my predecessors
0:04:22 managed the brand, said no CMO ever.
0:04:24 The typical incoming speech?
0:04:28 Thank God I’m here, we need to redo everything.
0:04:31 Which is usually self-defeating.
0:04:35 For about 50 years following World War II,
0:04:38 it was good business to churn out a mediocre product
0:04:42 and then surround it with emotion, i.e. branding.
0:04:45 On any given night, about 60% of America
0:04:47 was in one of three places,
0:04:50 ABC, CBS, or NBC.
0:04:52 Via the miracle of TV advertising,
0:04:55 a few cents worth of peanut paste
0:04:59 could be transubstantiated into a jar of maternal love
0:05:02 as choosy mothers choose Jif.
0:05:05 In the age of the internet,
0:05:08 network television is in hospice.
0:05:13 Exhibit A, the proposed merger of Omnicom and Interpublic.
0:05:17 When I started Profit, a brand strategy consultancy,
0:05:21 these firms were the alphabets and metas of the economy.
0:05:23 Now they’re consolidating,
0:05:27 two emaciated polar bears fighting over fewer seals
0:05:30 and sharing a melting piece of ice.
0:05:34 The previous sentence is both awful and wonderful,
0:05:35 mostly the former.
0:05:39 Brands mean a lot less than they used to.
0:05:43 Consumers now have a range of weapons of mass diligence
0:05:45 to help them find and rate products,
0:05:49 starting with Google and social media.
0:05:52 I travel constantly, so I used to rely on well-known brands
0:05:55 when booking hotels in cities I didn’t know well.
0:05:58 The name Mandarin Oriental, or Four Seasons,
0:06:01 meant I could consistently expect and get
0:06:05 a seven or eight level customer experience.
0:06:09 Lately though, I’ve been using ChatGPT and other AI tools
0:06:13 to find nines that better fit the moment and me.
0:06:16 The gym at the Soho House Berlin,
0:06:19 the rooftop restaurant at the Waldorf in Beverly Hills,
0:06:22 the bar at Chiltern Firehouse.
0:06:26 If I sound like a privileged douchebag, trust your instincts.
0:06:31 The internet has diminished the power of even strong brands
0:06:34 and it’s penetrated the shield of good branding
0:06:39 from mediocre products like Nike, Intel, Target, et cetera.
0:06:43 A product or service that cannot fulfill its promise
0:06:46 to make you smarter or sexier can’t reverse its fortunes
0:06:49 by listening to Don Draper.
0:06:52 And inventing and refining a great product,
0:06:56 fixing its supply chain and improving your customer service
0:06:59 is a lot more work than turning to mid-journey
0:07:01 and asking for a new logo.
0:07:06 Jaguar’s problem for a long time has been products
0:07:09 that didn’t live up to the brand promise.
0:07:12 Well after its swinging London ’60s heyday,
0:07:15 Ford bought the company in 1989
0:07:18 and it’s now owned by India’s Tata.
0:07:21 It still manufactures the car in Coventry, UK,
0:07:23 thus technically preserving the Britishness
0:07:25 that’s key to its brand identity.
0:07:30 Although they’ve improved, the cars continue to be dogged
0:07:34 by a lingering reputation as mechanical nightmares.
0:07:37 Anybody who drove one was making the statement,
0:07:39 “I’m a gangster who probably owns two of these status symbols
0:07:42 because one is always in the shop.”
0:07:47 Style-wise, Jaguar’s current lineup has little of the illan
0:07:51 of the legendary E-type or other classic models.
0:07:54 In terms of sales in the premium car market,
0:07:57 Jaguar is an afterthought behind category leaders
0:07:59 BMW and Audi.
0:08:01 With a few exceptions,
0:08:03 Jaguar hasn’t been able to make anything
0:08:06 in the $50,000 plus price range that anybody wants to buy.
0:08:12 Jaguar’s current business response to this makes sense.
0:08:15 Management decided to wind the company down
0:08:16 and relaunch it.
0:08:19 Jaguar is ending production of its three current models
0:08:24 and retooling to produce an all-new, all-electric line.
0:08:27 It’s also decided to abandon the premium market
0:08:30 and go further upscale into luxury cars priced
0:08:33 at around $400,000.
0:08:36 This is a smaller market with fatter margins,
0:08:38 so the company is closing some dealerships.
0:08:42 All of which points to something that’s gone mostly
0:08:46 unremarked in the chatter about Jaguar’s rebrand.
0:08:48 Jaguar doesn’t see any growth selling
0:08:50 to lawyers and dentists,
0:08:51 but it does see a future selling
0:08:54 to entrepreneurs and financiers.
0:08:57 It’s going to be at least a year, however,
0:09:00 before any new era Jaguars go on sale.
0:09:03 No one outside the company knows how they will look
0:09:05 or what will be under the hood.
0:09:09 The clunky pink Type 00 sports tank Jaguar introduced
0:09:12 in Miami is a concept car.
0:09:14 It will never go into production.
0:09:16 I’ve been to a lot of car conventions
0:09:18 and seen a lot of concept cars.
0:09:20 In my view, they’re a waste of effort and money,
0:09:22 no matter how sexy.
0:09:25 They’re shiny, one-off marketing props.
0:09:29 Ivanka Trump is seriously more likely to be president
0:09:32 than the Tesla RoboVan is ever to be produced.
0:09:36 So with a dark year ahead of it
0:09:38 and no new product ready to show customers,
0:09:43 Jaguar decided to fix the one thing that wasn’t broken.
0:09:47 The new brand mark makes it seem Jaguar is relaunching
0:09:50 as an AI consulting firm.
0:09:53 The logo looks as if it was designed by AI
0:09:56 and never tested with real people.
0:09:59 According to one respondent to an entirely
0:10:02 unscientific survey I conducted on Instagram,
0:10:06 it, quote, would be a great logo for a kitchen knife set,
0:10:07 unquote.
0:10:12 One of the most precious things a company can possess
0:10:16 is a powerful logo, one that imprints itself on the eye
0:10:19 and instantly tells the brand story.
0:10:22 Humans are visually oriented.
0:10:25 Written language is only about 5,000 years old
0:10:28 and the printing press is less than 600 years old,
0:10:31 but visual communication via drawn or painted images
0:10:35 dates back to our Neanderthal ancestors.
0:10:40 That’s right, it may even predate our existence as a species.
0:10:45 We process visual information about 60,000 times faster
0:10:47 than we do words.
0:10:51 Researchers at MIT once estimated that the human brain
0:10:53 can correctly identify an image
0:10:55 in as little as 13 milliseconds.
0:11:00 When I talk about logos in my marketing class,
0:11:02 I demonstrate their power by asking students
0:11:07 if they can identify a mark using just their peripheral vision.
0:11:11 Great logos, the Nike Swoosh, the McDonald’s Arches,
0:11:14 the Mercedes three-pointed star,
0:11:18 are immediately recognizable even almost outside
0:11:19 our plane of vision.
0:11:23 An effective logo needs to be meaningful,
0:11:27 resonant, distinctive, and scalable.
0:11:31 Jaguar’s pouncing cat, which it called the leaper,
0:11:33 was all that.
0:11:36 There are a few things in nature stronger
0:11:39 and more agile than a jaguar.
0:11:42 As sleek and beautiful as they are lethal,
0:11:43 they’re the apex predator
0:11:46 of South America’s jungles and deserts.
0:11:51 Stealthy and fast, they kill by pouncing from behind
0:11:54 and piercing their prey’s skulls with jaws and teeth
0:11:58 capable of penetrating artillery shells.
0:12:01 Also, they’re the only animals that, when hunted,
0:12:05 will turn around and hunt their hunters.
0:12:07 Not really, but go with it.
0:12:09 It’s on brand for the cat.
0:12:14 Jaguars look arrogant as fuck and rightfully so.
0:12:17 The old logo and mark told that story.
0:12:19 The new logo says,
0:12:23 “We hired some MIT grads who, for $800,000,
0:12:26 told us to lay off everyone in our customer service department
0:12:28 and replace them with Salesforce’s agent force.”
0:12:33 Jaguar’s leaper now survives
0:12:36 only in a faint echo of the original,
0:12:39 the negative space in a field of horizontal lines
0:12:43 on a small side panel of the Type 00.
0:12:48 To take the greatest visual metaphor in automotive history
0:12:52 and kill it is to destroy shareholder value.
0:12:55 It’s the essence of CMO malpractice.
0:12:57 It’s just as stupid and wasteful
0:13:00 as if Disney responded to a spate of weak releases
0:13:03 by taking Mickey, Moana, Darth Vader,
0:13:05 and Elsa out and shooting them.
0:13:08 It’s also a rejection of everything
0:13:12 that ever made Jaguar, Jaguar.
0:13:15 Not just the grace and power of the animal,
0:13:17 but also the brand’s Britishness.
0:13:23 There’s nothing feline or rule Britannia about the Type 00.
0:13:25 And for all that talk about copying nothing,
0:13:28 the car’s silhouette is reminiscent
0:13:30 of the Rolls-Royce Spectre.
0:13:34 And its sharp edges and lines recall the Cybertruck.
0:13:37 The Jaguar people who signed off on all this
0:13:40 richly deserve to have their careers pounced on.
0:13:45 Branding is about differentiation
0:13:48 and creating a sense of scarcity.
0:13:50 That means leaning into whatever you have
0:13:53 that makes you stand out.
0:13:56 If you’re going bald, shave your head completely.
0:13:59 If you’re a tall woman, wear heels.
0:14:02 If you need glasses, get the biggest pair you can find.
0:14:06 Jaguar is abandoning its differentiators
0:14:08 while at the same time trying to enter
0:14:10 the high-end luxury market,
0:14:14 where being singular is the whole shooting match.
0:14:18 The higher you go in price, the more eccentric it gets.
0:14:23 In my view, Jaguar should not have spent a dollar
0:14:26 on marketing before it had an inspiring,
0:14:28 ready-to-ship product to show the public.
0:14:31 The companies that have added the most value
0:14:36 in the past 10 years barely advertise at all.
0:14:41 Netflix now has a market cap of about $400 billion.
0:14:45 In 2014, it was about $21 billion.
0:14:48 Alphabet’s market cap 10 years ago
0:14:52 was roughly $390 billion.
0:14:57 Today, it is $2.5 trillion.
0:15:02 Those companies and others took dollars out of advertising
0:15:04 and put them into making better products
0:15:07 and getting them to customers faster and cheaper
0:15:08 than their competitors.
0:15:13 Amazon didn’t win e-commerce with a marketing campaign.
0:15:15 It won by doing the hard work of guaranteeing
0:15:18 free delivery in 48 hours.
0:15:22 Others have won by going asset light.
0:15:26 NVIDIA uses suppliers for all of its manufacturing.
0:15:30 She-In, the fastest growing apparel company in the world,
0:15:33 has no stores and no warehouses.
0:15:38 It’s not too late for Jaguar to ditch its rebrand
0:15:40 and start all over again with a strategy
0:15:43 where a great product is not an afterthought
0:15:45 to a marketing campaign.
0:15:49 This is, in a way, an opportunity to announce
0:15:51 that after a huge outpouring of goodwill
0:15:53 toward the iconic metaphor,
0:15:57 they are going old coke and reverting.
0:16:00 However, we shouldn’t hold our breath.
0:16:03 The current landscape of reality TV stars
0:16:06 and misinformation has rid the corporate world
0:16:09 of one important and simple phrase.
0:16:11 We fucked up.
0:16:16 – Life is so rich.
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