This brief article by Claudio Perez-Korinko* is about JAGUAR achieving “visual Esperanto” brilliance in their rebranding message for JAGUAR’s new brand identity. The intent of this article is not to evaluate the new brand identity, nor is it to examine the product implicitly associated with the visual creative asset.
In advertising, we rely on visual Esperanto tactics as the universal language to transcend cultural differences in international markets and also in-country multicultural consumer segments through the power of color and visual images. In other words, we tell a visual cultural story to engage a desired audience with the brand. And this is what JAGUAR accomplished in its rebranding message. Let’s see how they did it!
Jaguar rebrand: The Message
The affective visual Esperanto message strategy seeks to trigger an emotional involvement between an ultramodern global-multicultural consumer and JAGUAR’s rebranded brand through a make-believe futuristic experience.
Jaguar rebrand:Target Consumer
The brand is talking to an audience in a near future marketplace, which is denoted by a futuristic “look and feel” and powered by colors signifying diversity, inclusion, and, more importantly, togetherness.
The audience of interest is as vivid and exuberant as the rebranding message, it is indeed the new flamboyant brand lover, the high-spirited and energetic persona drawn to dare the unusual, the new, the rule breaker unconfined by the existing paradigms of the car industry.
Emotional Appeal
The visual storytelling theme is powered in the background by the idea of a planet in pink and supported in the foreground by a diverse talent signifying globalization in the future, and more importantly, fired by yellow, pink, orange, and red, in conjunction with descriptors in white appearing and fading, and intertwined with futuristic background music as the creative asset progresses.
Cultural Overlap
The colors and images are carefully crafted to convey a similar meaning across all cultures, building a new perception to the rebranded brand, in this case, more modernized, futuristic, glamorous, exuberant, and luxurious.
The selected color pallet is no accident, as it is tactically and culturally placed to evoke the same cultural meaning across countries in the western world, such as creativity, awareness and quality in the case of yellow pink to manifest romance and femininity, red to symbolize energy, excitement and action, and orange for vitality and adventure. And last, blue, which signifies trust, loyalty, and masculinity, goes back to former consumer associations to the leaping jaguar logo.
The juxtaposition of color meaning, human image and background is designed to capture the attention of the intended consumer to foster an attachment to the rebranded brand without alluding to the product. This is creating product anticipation and momentum for JAGUAR in the marketplace.
Awareness
The rebranding of visual creative assets is effectively working at two levels. It is immediately building a new perception of the rebranded brand primarily on visual stimuli and, secondly, on color-shock-value as it is developing a perceptual ripple effect for what’s to come; the product, Type 00, a concept car model which colors are associated with the overall message, pink and blue.
A Fantasy Execution Framework
The rebranding objective is to point out the future direction of the brand, which is “exuberant” and “vivid,” unique in itself, without “copying nothing.” Pink is romanticizing the brand to make it more personal and intimate to the target consumer, as JAGUAR knows that in a world of brand parity, brand, and customer relationships stand and last.
Jaguar Rebrand: Perceptual Distinctiveness
The overall color-shock-value of the visual creative asset plus the new typography on the logo has two primary effects. First, it builds perceptual distinctiveness in the mind of the consumer of interest, and second, it creates a more vivid set of brand associations. The power of these two tactics will allow the brand to continue being more memorable and more straightforward to recall and deepen its equity with a new and diversified consumer base globally.
Consider this: Stephen King of WWP Group, London once said: “A product can be quickly outdated; a successful brand is timeless.”
The rebranded strategy is precisely managing time in advance to keep its timeless brand value with a new consumer base; in other words, JAGUAR is breaking through the future to perpetuate its brand equity in a new phase of the market, and if its succeeds, JAGUAR will break the paradigms of car sameness design by copying nothing.
Conclusion
With the 30 seconds visual Esperanto advertisement, JAGUAR is not only perceptually rebranding itself but also setting the new paradigms for messaging, one that is driven by the power of color communication to a world of consumers that is heavily influenced by emotional design, including videos, reels, and postings. We are witnessing the rise of the image and color and the fall of the word.
*Claudio Perez-Korinko in the chief brand strategist and founder of latBrand, and he can be reached at [email protected]
