Jaguar’s failed rebrand reveals more than bad creative. It exposes the cowardice of brand leadership.

Jaguar’s latest campaign said, “Copy Nothing.”
But what they launched copied one thing perfectly: the corporate tradition of blaming the agency when leadership gets it wrong.

No cars. No curves. No roar.
Just abstract visuals, minimalist slogans, and a branding exercise so out of touch, even Elon Musk publicly mocked it. The campaign was lambasted as empty, confusing, and emotionally tone-deaf. A luxury car brand… that showed no cars.

The public hated it.
Critics laughed at it.
And @Jaguar?
They fired the ad agency.

But here’s the real story: Who briefed the agency? Who approved the decks? Who nodded in the boardroom and said, “Yes, let’s hide the cars”?

The creatives didn’t conjure this campaign in a vacuum. Someone paid for it, approved it, championed it.

That someone is still sitting in Jaguar’s leadership.

The Real Problem: Vision Without Accountability

This isn’t about a bad campaign. This is about a broken model—one where agencies are hired as scapegoats, not strategic partners.

In today’s brand world, storytelling is strategy. The brief is the vision. If that vision is flawed, no amount of creative genius can salvage it. You can’t out-art direct a confused identity.

And Jaguar’s identity right now? A luxury brand sprinting toward electric futurism while ghosting its legacy, its product, and its soul.

What did they expect the agency to do—turn vapor into velocity?

When the Brief Is Rotten, the Brand Fails

Let’s be clear: agencies aren’t perfect. But they don’t control the product, the pricing, or the internal politics. They don’t choose whether the car appears in the campaign. That comes from the client.

We’ve seen this before:

• Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner ad? The agency got slammed, but the brand signed off every frame.
• Gap’s rebrand? Same story—designers got burned, execs stayed quiet.
• Tropicana’s disaster? Agencies got the blame, even though the client forced the change.

Agencies don’t greenlight madness. They’re handed it.

The Cowardice of Creative Blame

What we’re watching isn’t just a brand misstep. It’s a case study in corporate cowardice. A company trying to reinvent itself—without the courage to own its decisions.

The truth? Jaguar’s problem isn’t the ad agency. It’s that the people steering the ship don’t know what destination they’re heading toward—so they blame the compass when they get lost.

A New Standard for Brand Leadership

We need to stop letting executives escape through the back door while their agencies are thrown under the bus.

If you brief it, own it. If you approve it, stand by it. If you kill it, don’t outsource the executioner.

Because marketing isn’t a magic trick. It’s an expression of vision. And when a rebrand collapses, it’s not the messenger who failed—it’s the strategist who didn’t know what they stood for.

Final Words:

If the story sucks, don’t shoot the storyteller.
Fire the author.