Jaguar reviewing Accenture Song creative account after divisive rebrand
As Jaguar Land Rover attempts to reposition itself as a company focused exclusively on electric vehicles, it announced a bold rebrand, dropping its famous logo, and rolling out a series of commercials calling on customers to “delete ordinary”. But while the firm enjoyed decade-high profits for the same year, Jaguar Land Rover is understood to be reviewing its creative account – held by Accenture Song until 2026 – due to ‘anti-woke’ backlash against the marketing stunt.
In 2026, Jaguar Land Rover is planning to relaunch as an all-electric and ultra high-end brand. The shift will see the historic motoring company selling the majority of its vehicles for more than £100,000. These plans have already impacted on the firm, presenting both up-sides and down-sides.
Jaguar clocked a notable fall in sales in 2024 – as it stopped selling new cars in the UK, and ceased production of most of its petrol models. This contributed to a fall in sales from 61,661 in 2022 to 33,320 in 2024 – prompting panic in some quarters. But showing the long-term potential for Jaguar’s extra-high-end pivot, despite the lower quantity of sales, value of those sales boomed, helping to deliver the firm’s highest full-year profit in a decade.
As sales of its EV line – the future of the company – expanded by 21.7%, pre-tax profit for the year to March 31 jumped up by 15%, hitting £2.5 billion. At the same time, profit before tax and exceptional items in the final quarter rose to £875 million, up from £661 million year on year.
All this makes the attempts by certain parts of the UK press to seize on Jaguar as an example of ‘go woke, go broke’ seem like a bit of a stretch. But that is the way the news that the automotive giant is reviewing its creative contracts has been greeted.
Jaguar Land Rover launched a review of its global creative account, after significant criticism from political and media figures for its PR pivot late in 2024. The account is currently shared by in-house agency Spark44 and Accenture Song until 2026 – with the firms collaborating on a rebrand that saw Jaguar refresh its corporate identity, and abandon its historic logo.
Copy nothing
Launched in November, reportedly to address already-flagging sales, the ‘copy nothing’ campaign included a series of abstract commercials, which saw people of different ages and ethnicities, dressed in bright colours, posing provocatively in otherworldly photo studios. This featured a number of models giving their best ‘Blue Steel’ pout, on what appeared to be the surface of a pink moon, behind a title card daring viewers to ‘create exuberant’; and another lone figure in an angular red overcoat painting over the phrase ‘delete ordinary’.
The campaign provoked ‘discussion’, as Jaguar insists it expected it to, and much of it came from sources which the company might well have been trying to distance itself from anyway. While some of the criticism came from the adverts not featuring a car at all (Jaguar would hardly be the first automotive brand to favour showing as little of its actual product as possible in abstract ads), the majority alluded to the diversity of the cast, or the bright colours of their clothes – which could tenuously be argued are a nod toward the persecution of the LGBT+ community.
Exactly what was ‘woke’ was widely left to the imagination by mainstream critics. Newspapers including The Daily Mail and The Telegraph largely let pictures of the models do the talking, when it came to explaining how they reached this conclusion. Similarly, anti-immigration politician Nigel Farage and Elon Musk (whose own EV giant Tesla has seen profits tumbled 71% since he became part of the far-right Trump administration) largely avoided details. However, their pining for a luxury car company leaving behind the archetypical ‘Jag man’ in favour of this new, inclusive identity, might be said to say enough about what and who they are taking exception to.
News that Jaguar may be considering going in a new direction with its creative account has prompted a good deal of triumphalism in those quarters. Farage, having previously said he expected Jaguar to go bust over its rebrand – and that would “deserve to” – added “I did try to warn you Jaguar”. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail chimed in that “Jaguar’s failed campaign follows a series of other similar woke rebrands”, comparing it to Nike and Coca-Cola.
The question of to what extent the campaign was or was not a success remains up for debate, though. When ‘copy nothing’ premiered, Jaguar sales had already been flagging – so claiming going ‘woke’ was the cause of a slump would be an oversimplification. But then Jaguar also enjoyed a notable £200 million boost in profit before tax in the same quarter the campaign was released.
Looking ahead, Jaguar might – or might not – opt to change its creative account, but rather than because it wants to row back on its changes, it may be because it has already realised the results it was aiming for. As the world’s automotive market shifts away from combustion engines – and older, more conservative consumers who favour them – the brand has given a clear message that it is relevant to people beyond Jag men like the leader of Reform. And it has certainly not gone broke in the process.
