Built on want, not need.

The situation

Jaguar's rebrand had created one of the most debated moments in recent brand history. A bold new identity. A concept car. A direction that rejected everything the brand had been — and gave almost no indication of what it was becoming. The reaction was loud, largely critical, and almost entirely rational: where are the cars? what does this mean? who is this for?

The question for a global launch wasn't how to course-correct. It was how to take something avant-garde and make it land — commercially, culturally, at scale.

The insight

No one has ever needed a Jaguar. The brand runs entirely on desire — on want. The mistake wasn't the rebrand. The mistake was letting people respond to it rationally. You don't explain art. You make people feel something.

The approach

Almost everyone around the rebrand was trying to defend it — to meet the rational criticism with rational answers. I argued for the opposite: lean into the irrationality. The new Jaguar wasn't a product to be justified. It was an object of desire, positioned like a piece of contemporary art — to be wanted before it was understood.

This reframed the entire brief. The audience wasn't the critics. The average luxury car buyer is getting younger — significantly younger. At Rolls-Royce, the average owner is now 35. The same shift is reshaping the upper end of automotive across the board. These buyers don't want heritage. They want to want something.

The strategy and creative I developed spanned brand positioning, campaign architecture, and channel approach — built around a single idea: stop defending the rebrand and start seducing the audience it was actually built for.

The work covered

Full-service strategy and creative development — from brand narrative and strategic positioning through to campaign architecture, communications planning, and creative execution across brand and product channels.