Overhauls of 'heritage brands' raise the question: How important are our products to our identities?
When Katja Vogt considers a Jaguar, she pictures a British-made car purring confidently along the Italian coastline — a vision of familiarity that conveys “that dreaming, longing feeling we all love.”
She’s not sure what to think about Jaguar now after the 89-year-old company announced a radical rebranding this week that featured loud colors and androgynous people — but no cars. Jaguar, the company says, will now be JaGUar. It will produce only electric vehicles beginning in 2026.
And say goodbye to British racing green, Cotswold Blue and black. Its colors are henceforth electric pink, red and yellow, according to a video that has received backlash online. Its mission statement: “Create exuberance. Live vivid. Delete ordinary. Break moulds.”
“Intrigued?” @Jaguar posted on social media. “Weird and unsettled” is more like it, Vogt wrote on Instagram.
“Especially now, with the world feeling so dystopian,” the Cyprus-based brand designer wrote, “a heritage brand like Jaguar should be conveying feelings of safety, stability, and maybe a hint of rebellion — the kind that shakes things up in a good way, not in a way that unsettles.”
Our brands, ourselves
Jaguar, a sturdy symbol of British tradition and refinement, was one of several iconic companies that announced significant rebrandings in recent weeks, upending a series of commercial — and, yes, cultural — landmarks by which many modern human beings sort each other, carve out identities and recognize the world around them.
Campbell’s, the soupy, 155-year-old American icon immortalized in pop culture decades ago by Andy Warhol, is ready for a new, soupless name. Comcast’s corporate reorganization means that there will soon be two television networks with “NBC” in their name — CNBC and MSNBC — that will no longer have any corporate connection to NBC News, a U.S. legacy news outlet.
One could even argue that the United States itself is rebranding a bit with the election this month of former President Donald Trump and Republican majorities in the House and Senate in a divided nation. Unlike Trump’s first election in 2016, he won the popular vote in what many called a national referendum on American identity.
Are we, then, the sum total of our consumer decisions — what we buy, where we travel and whom we elect?
Certainly, it’s a question for those privileged enough to be able to afford such choices. But volumes of research in the art and science of branding — from “brandr,” an old Norse word for burning symbols into the hides of livestock — say those factors do contribute to the modern sense of identity. So rebranding, especially of heritage names, can be a deeply felt affront to consumers.
“It can feel like the brand is turning its back on everything that it stood for — and therefore it feels like its turning its back on us, the people who subscribe to that idea or ideology,” said Ali Marmaduke, strategy director with the Amsterdam-based Brand Potential.
He said cultural tension — polarization — in 2024 is surging over politics, wars in Russia and the Mideast, the environment, public health and more, creating what Marmaduke said is known as a “polycrisis:” the idea that there are several massive crises converging and that feel scary and complex.
“People are understandably freaked out by that,” he said. “So we are looking for something that will help us navigate this changing, threatening world that we face.”
