Jaguar’s ‘Woke’ Ad Controversy: What Went Wrong?

0:00So Jaguar did a new campaign. Jaguar the car company everyone. So Jaguar went away with their logo. Why do you say it like the Jaguar? Jaguar. Jaguar. What her? I don't know how to pronounce it. They got rid of the Jaguar. They also got rid of the way they wrote the lettering. And they had a commercial that had nothing to do with cars.

0:32It looked like it had more to do with fashion, just being really honest. And I had no idea what the commercial was about. And I think most people had no clue what the commercial was about. And when I saw the new Jaguar ad, I was like, I don't know what company this is. So I looked at their X handle because I first saw it on X. I was like, did it get hacked? Did like someone hack their account and just put this up? Because they were also responding like, thank you for the feedback. We appreciate it, but look forward to what happens soon. And I was like, what the heck is this? Did this company just get hacked?

1:05Okay, we have to describe it a little more for everyone. So without trying to go into pick sides or anything like that, the ad that they showed had nothing to do with cars. And it was more about gender identity, right? Which is fine, but if you're a car company, your mission is to sell cars, right? You should probably focus on that first. To your target audience. Which is your target audience. I believe online articles were saying something like middle-aged men. Yes, exactly. And who drove Jaguars before? I don't know if Bond drove Jaguars. Bond always drove what? Aston Martin. Aston Martins, right?

1:40So anyway, my point is, so what happened was I looked at the Twitter thread. So Elon was like, hey, I thought you sell cars. And then the comment was like, this is the future or whatever. And then people just started kind of ragging on them. And then they just kept responding like, this is our new way of doing things, blah, blah, blah. I think the point is, when you do that, when you take a stance in a certain direction, you are alienating your main base. And your main base, I saw a comment, someone's like, I was right about to buy a Jaguar tomorrow, I cannot buy one now. It's another Budweiser campaign all over again.

2:13And they didn't learn from the Budweiser campaign. And so I think the other thing is, Volvo and Porsche just came out with new ads recently, Volvo the same day. And they were like, it just showed the product. It was a good product. And it's like, that's all it is at the end of the day. Build a good product. Don't talk about others. And the other thing is, someone tweeted this out, but Jaguar's new brand person, there's a video, and then he was very focused on gender identity, right? And I'm not going to go into details, but it wasn't even focused on cars. It was more focused on, hey, let's talk about diversity.

2:48Let's talk about inclusion. And it was like a one to two minute speech, right? And that stuff is all fine, but it shouldn't be the main focus if you're going to try to sell more cars. Dude, totally agree with this. And people have to get rid of these political concepts within their marketing and their business. And I look at a lot of these concepts as political. Gender politics. Yeah. Eric and I don't have an issue with people's beliefs. They can do whatever they want and we support it. We both have friends who have adjusted their gender. And we have people that we've had on our team. Yeah, we still do.

3:31And Eric and I don't mind any of this. We're big believers that people should do whatever makes them happy and what works for them. No one should judge their life as their life. Just don't impose it on other people. And that's what companies are doing with their marketing. And I think if you're going to alienate your original customer, you have to be okay with revenue loss. And if that's where your business wants to go and you're okay with that, that's fine. But if you're a publicly traded company and your shareholders are the public, you're supposed to do what's best for your shareholders, which is make them money, whether people like it or not.

4:09And I think that's a big thing that's happened in the last few years that I think we'll see less and less. And I bet you if you fast forward a year, some of these people at Jaguar will be fired and terminated. And they should have hired an ad agency. This is when people are saying like, oh, you can do everything on your own, AI and technology. If they hire an ad agency, I bet you this mistake would have never happened. If you're an agency owner and you want to grow faster, check out the Agency Owners Association. That's hosted by my podcast co-hosts, Neil Patel and myself. And we have other agency owners that are doing eight figures a year.

4:42They were doing nine figures a year. They sold their business for hundreds of millions of dollars. And they're going to share their experiences with you. There's a whole host of other benefits. And the cool thing is that there's a seven-day free trial. And you should check it out now because we're going to take the prices up. So just go to marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more. And we'll see you inside. You know, it was one of the Collison brothers from Stripe. not John, who's the other one? Patrick. Okay, so it was John. So Patrick's the more out there one, right? So John was just like, everyone needs to review all ad agencies after this, right?

5:11So like a lot of people on whatever, like even if you use X as an example, or even LinkedIn, people are just like, this has been a fiasco. I think Dharmesh commented too. David Hanemizer, DHH from Basecamp, right? He was like, this is a fiasco too. And again, I think we're all focused. We're not, the gender identity thing is like, that's fine, right? But everyone's basically like, Like, hey, you should focus on back to business. Back to business, back to basics. Focus on your mission. Yeah. A business is all about people have a problem. You solve the problem. Remove opinions and politics and just help people solve their problem.

5:46And if you can do that, great. And stick with your core mission. For example, Volvo, the car manufacturer, their whole pitch is about safety. And if you look at one of the recent ads that was posted, It was a dude who finds out that his wife is pregnant. They're having a kid and the future is happening at the same time. So it's like a crystal ball and they're showing what's happening in the future. And they're showing, I believe his daughter or wife was walking on a crosswalk and someone who was in a Volvo and they're able to stop on a dime and his daughter survived or his wife survived. When you look at that and they ended up saying Volvo, the new car, the new versions, the safest Volvo that they ever built.

6:29It sticks with their overall mission and their buyer market. Yep. And I've always remembered this. I remember in high school, some of our friends would have Volvos and we always made fun of them. They're like tanks, right? It's like they can take anything. They can take a beating, but that's good brand recognition, right? You remember it for that. It's like, it's a tank. It's safe, right? Yes. All right, guys. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, view, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io slash agency. I think the price right now is$1.99 or so. It's a seven-day free trial. We're bumping it up to$3.99.

6:58So depending on when you listen to this, the price might already be at$3.99. So that being said, goodbye.