Why the Woke Jaguar Ad REALLY Sucks - It's an Homage to the Void
Soulless, angry people wearing 1960s thrift shop finds is hardly inspiring.
If you haven’t seen the woke Jaguar ad yet, here it is in all its cringy glory:
The ad sucks.
The suckage has nothing to do with the “diversity” of the casting or their gender/sexual orientation, because we can’t tell who wants to sleep with whom from the ad.
The problem with the Jaguar ad is that it is soulless, hypocritical, and pretentious in its empty banality.
Let’s analyze it step by step.
Jaguar’s new slogan is “copy nothing,” which the ad spectacularly fails at.
EVERYTHING in this ad is copied.
New Wave 80s group Devo and Austin Powers are calling - they want their wardrobe back.
Am I supposed to be surprised by the clothes in this ad? I’ve seen funkier Mod outfits on any average campy 1960s show, such as Batman, Get Smart, or The Monkees. Hell, Jan Brady wore more outrageous stuff.
Am I to be shocked by a man in some sort of poufy mushroom skirt carrying a sledgehammer?
David Bowie rocked the skirt much better back in the 1970s!
Apparently Jaguar peeps never watched the 1960s cult classic Barbarella, or, perhaps they did, and falsely assumed none of the rest of us have.
In short, the only “shocking” thing about the Jaguar ad’s clothing choices is that Jaguar used to be a classy, upscale brand that they’ve now cheapened to the level of a trendy retro LA nightclub circa 2005.
The Message.
Now let’s look at the message. Or rather, The Message (in caps).
First, we are told “Create Exuberant.”
Not: CREATE EXUBERANCE.
Apparently, the new Jaguar brand hates proper English grammar? Or is there some sort of subconscious programming here about the dumbing down purposefully promoted by this vacuous “new” culture?
The marketing team at Jaguar apparently thinks very highly of themselves, and has created a lavish term for their garish advertising: Exuberant Modernism:
Jaguar’s transformation is defined by Exuberant Modernism, a creative philosophy that underpins all aspects of the new Jaguar brand world. It embraces bold designs, unexpected and original thinking, creating a brand character that will command attention through fearless creativity.
Next we are told to “live vivid”:
I don’t find anything particularly offensive about the above screenshot, I just find it to be trite. As if we haven’t already seen a thousand fashion shoots and videos with flowing organza dresses. Cue the wind machine!
The bigger question is: What does this have to do with luxury automobiles?
Next up: “delete ordinary.”
Now, I don’t want to (heaven forbid!) sound too “conspiratorial” here, but I was struck by this part when I first watched the ad. Why does the “delete ordinary” shot show an old white guy painting (or painting over) what appears to be the Stars and Stripes American flag? Once again, we have some subconscious messaging here - delete America, perhaps?
Next up: “break moulds,” as pictured above. I’ll note here that Orange Cheesepuff Man is for some reason boxed up in a small blue windowless room. He first holds the sledgehammer like he’s actually going to use it, but ends up putting it down and resigning himself to being boxed in, as he slumps against a wall.
The message here: Give up the fight. You won’t win. Resign yourself to the box.
In the final scene, all the rainbow people come back together to sit on a rock slab in a bleak, desolate landscape. Inexplicably, they all turn their heads together at the same time; one row turning one way and the other the opposite.
No emotions, no expressions on their faces. Just robotic head turning on cue. After turning forward, they walk away, backwards, to leave us with the message: “copy nothing.”
Maybe what Jaguar really means by “copy nothing” is not “don’t copy anything” but “copy Nothing” as in The Nothing, the evil that threatens to consume all of Fantasia in the Neverending Story.
“A hole would be something. Nah, it was Nothing. And it got bigger and bigger.”
~Rock Biter“It’s the emptiness that’s left. It’s like a despair, destroying this world and I have been trying to help it.”
~Gmork
What the hell is wrong with the marketing team at Jaguar?
Jaguar used to stand for class. Not cheap knock-off messaging parodying the worst in Apple marketing.
But Jaguar isn’t budging. They are doubling down.
In a leaked internal memo, Jaguar’s CEO, Adrian Mardell, threatened disciplinary action against any employees who criticized the ad either at work or outside of work. He also wrote:
Rekindling Jaguar’s soul is not the work of any one individual and has been created with love and care by many hands.
Never mind that a car brand doesn’t have a soul, this new ad campaign is anything but soulful. It’s soulless, dead, dehumanizing crap that spits on human creativity.
Notice how no-one in the ad even smiles slightly. Everyone is frowning. They look angry and drained of all lifeforce, as if they had just been used up as batteries in the Matrix.
Where’s the joy? The “exuberance”? These people might as well be robots. Hell, modern robots look friendlier than these sourpusses.
In short, the Jaguar ad is everything the ad says it is against. It is derivative, dull, and does not break any new ground. All it does is continue in the cheap and tawdry trend of dead-eyed, unsmiling people wearing slightly outrageous clothes acting in pretentious, inhuman ways.
In short, the ad is a perfect celebration of The Void.
Copy Nothing, indeed.
The entire Jaguar ad comes across as an absurdist homage to orange.
Is the subversion being subversively hinted at via subtext is that it's okay to support Donald Trump?
(The only way to discuss absurdist media is absurdly!)
I thought Bud Light was a Master Class in killing your brand. This is Graduate School. Jag was a wonderful car (I loved the E-Type) and it lost its luster. An effort was needed to get it back but this was like taking a sledgehammer to David.