Jaguar Land Rover’s decision to fire the advertising agency behind its disastrous DEI-fueled campaign is a classic case of “too little, too late.”
Reported first by The Telegraph, this move is as obvious as it is overdue. The company’s attempt to rebrand with a woke, car-less ad was a monumental miscalculation, and now they’re scrambling to undo the damage. But let’s be clear: this shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.
The ad campaign, launched in late 2024, was a wreck from the start. Brightly colored models (naturally mostly minorities of ambiguous gender), no cars, and a slogan that screamed virtue signaling rather than vehicle sales: “Copy nothing.”
It was a DEI fever dream, ignoring the very product Jaguar is supposed to sell. Critics rightly pointed out that the ads didn’t even feature cars, a glaring oversight that should have cost jobs immediately.
Wokeness and DEI are on life support, and Jaguar’s campaign was a desperate gasp for relevance in a dying era. The public is fed up with reverse-discrimination masquerading as “political activism.” Jaguar should have seen the societal shift coming, but instead, they doubled down on a strategy that alienated their core audience.
The backlash was swift and severe. Just look at some of the comments under that above X post.
Jaguar’s mistake wasn’t just ideological; it was fundamentally bad advertising. The goal of any ad is to sell a product, yet Jaguar’s campaign seemed more interested in making a statement than moving metal. This isn’t activism; it’s incompetence, and it cost the company dearly in reputation and revenue.