When a Rebrand Becomes a Funeral: Jaguar’s $10B Mistake

How to Kill a Heritage Brand in Five Years — The Jaguar Playbook

Let’s be honest, we don't see most rebrands fail because of a logo or a colour palette. Those rebrands that fail normally happen because somewhere along the way, the brand forgets the one thing its customers are really buying. Jaguar just gave the whole industry a $10B masterclass lesson in what happens when you forget that. Between 2018 and FY24/25, their global sales dropped from over 180,000 vehicles to just over 26,000. That’s not a “tough quarter.” That’s unfortunately a complete collapse. And while it’s tempting to blame the market, EV competition, or shifting consumer behaviour, the truth is sharper, Jaguar broke the emotional contract it had with its customers, and once that’s gone, numbers follow fast.

“When you break the emotional contract, customers don’t debate it. They just leave.”

Every brand has an emotional default, no doubt you've heard that from me before. The emotional default is the feeling or emotion attached to the buying decision of every customer. That core feeling people buy from you, whether they can articulate it or not. For Jaguar, it was always unapologetic British luxury, wrapped in performance-led rebellion and it was what they were famous for. The growler badge, the low-slung lines, the deep, unapologetic roar of a petrol engine, these weren’t just features of Jaguar. They were the emotional triggers, hardwired into the brand’s DNA, that made people feel something very specific: status, power, and a certain kind of refined danger. Heritage brands especially operate on what I call the trust loop. Over years, sometimes decades, customers absorb the brand’s story until it becomes part of their own identity. Now, you can evolve it, you can even modernise it, but you can’t rip it out and replace it without consequences. If you do, you’re not “modernising”, you’re actually becoming a different brand entirely, and the people who once swore by you will feel that shift instantly.

To be really blunt and to the point Jaguar’s rebrand wasn’t an evolution. It was an erasure. The minimalist logo. The “copy nothing” campaign. A sudden pivot to electric without anchoring it in their legacy of performance. And an ad campaign designed to make a cultural statement before making a product statement. The bridge from the past to the future wasn’t built, it was burned. Their loyal customers didn’t recognise what they loved anymore, and new audiences just couldn’t see why they should care.

“The bridge from the past to the future wasn’t built, it was burned.”

What this is more commonly known as is cognitive dissonance, confusion that creates doubt with customers and when we create doubt that impacts trust. The mental image of Jaguar no longer matched reality, and the easiest way for customers to resolve that discomfort was to simply walk away.

We have to understand that any slogans are promises made, and a promise without proof is a liability. At launch, Jaguar had no flagship EV in showrooms, no hero product to embody the new vision, but instead, they unveiled a concept car some described as “a Cybertruck meets the Pink Panther.” The problem was it didn’t scream performance and it certainly didn’t scream Jaguar. What it did scream was confusion.

“A rebrand without product proof is nothing more than theatre. Customers don’t buy theatre. They buy the thing the theatre is selling.”

As humans we rely on consistency bias and what that means is we expect the brands we trust to keep delivering on the same emotional promise. When your message says one thing and your product says another, you’re not being bold anymore, you’re just breaking that bias. And once that bias or understanding is broken, loyalty doesn’t just shrink, it evaporates.

Now inclusion, diversity, and representation all matter, and when they’re done well it can expand a brand’s relevance without losing its heritage. The error was Jaguar didn’t weave those values into the emotional fabric of the brand, they just bolted them on like aftermarket parts. What it creates in turn is loyalists feeling excluded, new audiences questioning if it's authentic, and the result is neither group lean in.

“New values will never land if they’re bolted on instead of built in.”

Social identity theory (How much your identity and behavior influence buying decisions) tells us people buy into brands that reflect their values and sense of belonging. So when you shift those values suddenly and without a bridge or link, you risk both groups keeping their distance.

To make matters worse, reports suggest Jaguar’s own design team flagged their concerns about the rebrand and the decision to outsource it. That’s not just creative tension but a structural fault in my opinion. If your own people don’t believe in the change, there's a high chance your market never will either. Internal alignment isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the foundation of execution and without it, everything you put out into the world will feel hollow, because it is hollow on the inside.

The big lesson here isn’t just for Jaguar. It’s for every brand that's feeling the pressure to modernise. Let me say it clearly “Protect your emotional default”. Update the look, sure, refresh the offer, absolutely, but never change the feeling your customers are buying. Lead with product. Marketing without proof is theatre, and understand that customers aren’t paying for a ticket. Expand without abandoning. You can bring in new audiences without evicting the old ones. Align internally before going external and if your team’s not in, your customers probably won’t be either. And use any heritage you might have as a launchpad, not a straightjacket. Porsche’s Taycan and Land Rover’s Defender reboot are great, living proof examples to show it can be done.

“Heritage isn’t a straightjacket. It’s a launchpad.”

Right now there’s a lot of temptation for older brands, heritage brands to flatten their identities, mimic tech brands, and basically chase whatever’s trending in culture. But relevance without emotional continuity is super brittle and can break things very easily. In life we build trust through repeated, aligned behaviour over time. Your reputation is built on repetition and if you break that as a brand your customers don’t fight to bring it back. They simply move on to someone who “gets” them. Jaguar’s rebrand isn’t just a failed marketing exercise but a great case study in the dangers of mistaking shock value for emotional value.

Heritage isn’t a weight that will hold you back, it’s the altitude that's going to keep you visible. Cut it loose without building something equally powerful and you don’t just change course. You disappear. We don't need to understand the future of a heritage brand by looking at its logo, just look at the emotional current running through its customers. Remember if you lose that, the rest is just noise.

By Nick Gray, Founder – IGU Global