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Welcome Back to TWISM’s Autopsy Series!
In this series, we examine the biggest actual marketing deaths worldwide. While others made expensive mistakes, you, along with 70,000+ professional TWISM readers, are learning from their failures for free.
Keep in mind that these weekly autopsies could save your career.
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🔬 The Main Autopsy: Jaguar’s “Copy Nothing” Identity Crisis
Patient Details
Brand: Jaguar (Jaguar Land Rover, owned by Tata Motors).
Campaign: “Copy Nothing / Delete Ordinary” global rebrand, called Project Roar.
Budget: Not disclosed (global, multi-market brand relaunch).
Cause of Death: Lifestyle-first, product-free rebrand caused a brand identity crisis, and also the campaign launched into a showroom with almost no cars to sell.
Time of Death: July 3, 2025, when multiple outlets tied a 97% April sales collapse (1,961 to 49 cars in Europe) to the rebrand and product pullback.
What They Intended
Jaguar set out to “reimagine” itself as an ultra-luxury EV brand, guided by a philosophy of “Exuberant Modernism” and the mantra “Copy Nothing.” The brand unveiled a new visual identity, minimalist wordmark, and slogans like “Live vivid” and “Delete ordinary,” promising a bold future as it phased out combustion models ahead of an all-electric line from 2026.
Leadership explicitly said they didn’t want to “turn up like an auto brand,” prioritising artistic expression and online debate over traditional car advertising.
Credit: Jaguar (www.jaguar.com)
What Actually Happened
The hero 30-second spot showed androgynous models in vivid outfits on a pink set, with no car in sight, plus copy like “Create Exuberant” and “Copy Nothing.” Social users immediately dubbed it “woke,” “confusing,” and “a fashion ad that forgot the product.”
The ad went ultra-viral (over 100M+ views on X alone), fuelled by mockery, including Elon Musk’s “Do you sell cars?” quote reply.
Memes and brand parodies (Nothing, Razer, Specsavers, others) reworked Jaguar’s new wordmark, turning the rebrand into a running industry joke.
Jaguar’s own data showed a 24% rise in Google searches from wealthier demographics and more than double website visits.
In Europe, Jaguar registrations collapsed 97% year-on-year in April 2025 (1,961 cars to just 49), as legacy models were pulled and dealers were left with almost nothing to sell.
By mid-2025, coverage linked the sales crash and brand confusion and Jaguar was reported to be rethinking its agency relationship, and the design chief behind the rebrand was out.
Credit: Jaguar (www.jaguar.com)
The Numbers
97.5% April 2025 sales collapse in Europe: from 1,961 cars in April 2024 to 49 a year later.
Jaguar sales down ~72% globally in Q1 2025 as legacy models were phased out.
Near £700m quarterly revenue hit at JLR as new US tariffs and Jaguar’s wind-down pushed revenue down 9.2% to £6.6bn.
Profit nearly halved: underlying pre-tax profit dropped ~49% to £351m in the same quarter.
Brand metrics up, money down: 24% more Google traffic from wealthier users, visits to Jaguar.com more than doubled, and a 20% uptick in “worth paying more for” perception.
Cyber + brand turmoil costlier still: later in 2025, a cyberattack added £196m in direct costs and helped produce a ~$750m quarterly loss, in a year already strained by tariffs and Jaguar’s radical repositioning.
Timeline of Destruction
Nov 18, 2024, Rebrand announced: Jaguar unveils new identity and Exuberant Modernism philosophy; “Copy Nothing” and “Delete Ordinary” are introduced.
Nov 19–23, 2024, Ad drops, internet howls: 30-second spot launches, goes viral, and is widely slammed as “woke” and “car-less”; Jaguar defends it as a “bold declaration of intent.”
Dec 2024, Think-pieces & “real cost” analysis: branding and content-marketing outlets dissect the social backlash and question whether the awareness can ever translate to sales.
April 2025 – Sales fall off a cliff: Europe sees only 49 Jaguars registered vs 1,961 a year earlier; analysts headline a “97% collapse in sales.”
July 2025 – Financial strain public: JLR reports 10.7% global sales drop, near-£700m revenue decline, and slashed margin targets, citing tariffs and Jaguar’s wind-down.
May–Dec 2025 – Creative fallout: reports emerge that Jaguar is reviewing its creative contract with Accenture Song, and that the design chief behind the rebrand has been dismissed.
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🧬 Failure DNA Analysis
The Root Cause: When Vibes Replace Vehicles
Cognitive Bias #1: Overconfidence Bias
Overconfidence bias is the tendency to overestimate our knowledge and ability to predict outcomes.
Jaguar bet that a high-concept, fashion-style film without a single car would elevate the brand and that critics would eventually “get it.” Executives openly framed the work as intentionally provocative and insisted the backlash simply proved people were paying attention.
Cognitive Bias #2: False Consensus Effect
False consensus is the bias where teams assume their own tastes and values are widely shared.
The campaign appears built on the belief that affluent EV buyers craved high-fashion, post-car symbolism, and would be happy to wait years for product, because that’s what the internal team and agency found inspiring. The 97% sales collapse and dealer complaints about having “almost nothing to sell” suggest the market did not share that worldview.
Warning Signs They Ignored:
No product on the lot: multiple analyses flagged that Jaguar had pulled most models before new EVs arrived, leaving dealers with bare showrooms.
Heritage disconnect: commentators warned that dropping the leaping-cat icon and classic cues risked alienating long-time buyers.
Agency & leadership churn: within months, leaks about reviewing the creative contract and then the design chief’s exit showed internal recognition that the bet had gone sideways.
Why Smart People Made This Dumb Decision:
Jaguar’s strategy as a high-stakes pivot to ultra-luxury with slashed volume targets, essentially a “bet the brand” moment.
In those moments, narrative fallacy is irresistible: “If we tell a radically different story, we’ll join the ranks of genius luxury reinventions.”
With early owned-media metrics (search, site visits, positive brand attributes) looking good, confirmation bias and overconfidence made it easy to ignore the much uglier lagging indicators, orders, and registrations.
🎭 Myth Busted: “If It Goes Viral, That Means The Campaign has Worked.”
The Myth:
“If a brand film explodes on social, drives search, and gets everyone talking, the marketing is a success. Sales will follow eventually.”
The Reality:
Jaguar’s campaign delivered huge social reach and better brand metrics among wealthy audiences, but in the same window, sales cratered, margins were cut, and the company publicly blamed tariffs and Jaguar’s wind-down for a near £700m revenue decline.
Credit: Jaguar (www.jaguar.com)
Data Points:
~163M views and 100k+ comments on X for the campaign film, yet just 49 Jaguars registered in Europe that April.
24% increase in Google traffic from higher-income users and >2x website visits, but JLR’s quarterly profit dropped ~49% and revenue fell 9.2%.
Jaguar sales down ~72% globally in the quarter as models were pulled, even while social chatter and media coverage hit all-time highs.
Why This Myth Persists:
Attention is easy to count; margin isn’t. Executives feel pressure to show big, public “moments,” and social dashboards offer immediate dopamine hits that mask slower-moving financial damage.
What to Do Instead:
Tie social KPIs to sellable inventory and conversion paths, not just “buzz.”
Stage rebrands so that symbolic storytelling lands after you’ve secured product continuity.
Build dashboards where finance and ops metrics sit next to social metrics in the same weekly review.
🛡️ Failure Prevention Toolkit: The “Copy Nothing Without Customers” Checklist
Before you launch a high-concept rebrand or social-first brand film:
✓ Strategy & Reality Check
Map the campaign narrative directly to actual product availability over the next 12–24 months.
Stress-test scenarios where tariffs, supply shocks, or product delays hit at the same time as your rebrand.
Require a written hypothesis: exactly how will this creative move specific commercial metrics?
✓ Audience & Brand Fit
Validate your “new” audience assumptions with external research, not just internal taste.
Test whether loyalists recognize any of themselves or the product in your new creative.
Run small-scale social pilots before global feeds get wiped and relaunched.
✓ Measurement & Governance
Pre-define red-line KPIs: dealer inventory levels, order intake, regional sales; if they fall below X, you adjust creative or media.
Pair brand-lift studies with hard finance data in every campaign post-mortem.
Block time with finance to reality-check any “this ad moved the stock” stories against actual drivers (tariffs, macro, cyber incidents).
✓ Creative & Agency Management
Put in writing how agencies will be judged on business outcomes, not just awards and sentiment.
Ensure someone at the table has explicit permission to say: “Cool film, but where’s the product?”
Protect product shots and value props from being deleted in the name of “art.”
Red Flags to Watch For:
Your hero film doesn’t feature the product at all.
Dealers quietly say, “We have nothing to sell,” while social reports say, “We’re winning TikTok.”
Leadership explains away sales declines entirely with external factors while doubling down on the same creative.
You see more coverage about your logo and “wokeness” than about your product or customer experience.
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That’s all for today. Thanks for reading. Now…
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~ Josh from “This Week in Social Media”
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