This is Jaguar’s Bud Light moment

It’s not uncommon these days for traditionally masculine brands to go woke and go broke. It seems like every few months a new ill-judged advertising campaign leads to sales and share prices contracting like the contents of one’s Speedos being lowered into cold water. But even by the standards of Bud Light, Gillette and the US Democratic Party, the latest Jaguar commercial is a howler, a defilement of quite demonic proportions.

Jaguar’s ‘progressive’ rebrand is supposed to anticipate its transition to electric vehicles (EVs), with an all-electric line-up of models slated to arrive in 2026. Since it was unveiled on Tuesday, the ad at the centre of the campaign has garnered more than 100million views on X, with 88,000 comments – practically none of them positive.

What would be the best way to introduce a new range of luxury EVs into a famous lineage, a stable once known for performance, swagger and a purr that could become a roar at the extension of an ankle? For deep-pile English comfort, combined with rakish charm, burnished walnut and proper dials – albeit perhaps tainted now with just a whiff of stale Rothmans, back sweat and a somewhat dated cologne?

Perhaps we could see a classic shot of an elegant line of cars, studio lights dawning over chrome and racing green, the swelling arch, the equine flank, all humorously offset by a three-pin plug socket where the fuel cap should be. Or perhaps when the trigger pedal is squeezed, it produces, not the expected jungle-cat roar, but rather a gentle breath, a miaow registered only on the charge indicator.

Or perhaps there could be a shot of that eponymous cat itself, stalking through the jungle, enjoying the enhanced silence that comes from its battery-powered movements. ‘We can add the roar in post’, the voice-over might say. Perhaps you could add in some clever commentary from an AI Attenborough, observing that while the jaguar itself has seen its range across South America halve over the past hundred years, these new electric models have doubled theirs. Or something like that.

Well, coming up with those took me about as much time as it took to type them, and perhaps it shows. But I’d still pit any of those scenarios against what Jaguar has actually produced. In the new ad, we see only a squad of garishly coloured yet oddly weary-looking, sexless, anorexic Teletubbies emerging from a lift like so many bipedal Quality Street. And literally nothing anywhere to suggest this ad might have anything to do with cars. The ad urges us to ‘create exuberant’, ‘live vivid’ and ‘delete ordinary’.

The late John Prescott was known for his fast reaction time as much as any actual political beliefs, most famously displayed in a left jab that seemed to almost anticipate the missile it was answering. But even by his standards, his death last night at the age of 86 – presumably in response to this insult to his beloved Jaguar brand, less than 48 hours after its unveiling – was impressively quick. It remains to be seen whether Jaguar has the presence of mind to co-opt the sad news about ‘Two Jags’ Prezza, and make out that its rebrand was a poorly judged joke all along. There could still be time to rescue its marque from the act of self-conflagration to which it appears to have committed.

Now, the shock of the new can be effective, when the thing is actually new. But the reaction to the Jaguar rebrand has been nothing like that which greeted Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, or one of Sir Jonathan Ive’s late 1990s Apple iMacs. After the ad appeared, X lit up like a Christmas tree of snark.

For any possible future customer of Jaguar, it was not so much shock that greeted this farrago. It was the quiet anger that greets a bunch of over-indulged theatre kids at an expensive school, putting on an end-of-year show that makes their parents privately resolve to cancel the skiing holiday and initiate some work experience on a farm.

Quite apart from its jarringly tone-deaf and hackneyed attempt to jolt us to ‘break moulds’, this ad is even shit on its own terms. The sort of voguish tonality employed to promote the nebulous virtues of products that can’t easily be communicated through visual media, like perfume or corporate insurance, doesn’t work when selling a product that absolutely can, like a car. But worse, the ad is so poorly executed. So shabby, half-baked, poorly co-ordinated, drably choreographed.

The actors, or avatars, don’t even function as eye candy. They actively repel. They look truculent, awkward, self-conscious, as if Jaguar had accidentally released the demo, the guide vocal, the walkthrough performed by runners and interns to get the camera positions and lighting right, while the actual chromo-dweebs were still in their trailers, busy scrolling. At one point, the old white bloke, the one who looks most remotely like an actual Jaguar customer, smiles the most hopeless apologetic little smile as he smears the screen with paint. It’s almost heartbreaking.

Even before John Prescott presented the brand with a potential last-minute exit strategy, many were wondering if the whole campaign was released some four-and-half months too early. Or perhaps it’s about to be retconned for a sequel, in which the magnificent apex predator suddenly bounds from the shadows to despatch the ridiculous legged baubles in a single swipe from his huge sabre-clawed paw. One can hope.

But what if the Jag execs really mean it? What if they’re committed to the rebrand as is? Well, they have certainly cleared some space for a new customer base to be developed. They are, to coin a phrase, unburdened by what has been – including some of the most beautiful, iconic cars ever conceived. I doubt a single person previously considering a Jaguar will now want one. Perhaps that was the point.

Come to think of it – did they think Kamala was going to win? Was the tag line going to be: ‘We are not going back?’ If so, I’ve got bad news for you guys. You are. You absolutely are.

Simon Evans is a spiked columnist and stand-up comedian. Tickets for his tour, Have We Met?, are on sale here.