This article was first published in PR Week.
Jaguar rebrand: the art of passing judgement
It’s all been a bit embarrassing.
Jaguar unveils the first stage of what promises to be a fundamental, more-than-just-a-new-logo rebrand, and almost everyone who claims to be an ’expert’ piles in with their unsolicited, unsubstantiated view on whether it ‘works’.
A pound for every LinkedIn post and I might just be able to afford a Jaguar myself.
I get it. Passing judgement is an unavoidable aspect of human nature; those first cave paintings probably depicting the tribe furore at the first cave person attempting a restyle by dragging a bone-comb through their hair.
Granted, judgement is handy when you’re asked to be a judge (thanks PR Week Awards, great fun), and the nature of our work means we’re required to provide judgement on everything from a spokesperson’s response to a big-ticket creative concept.
But for these judgements to be useful – be that achieving the goal or providing constructive support to help others reach it – they need to be rooted in objectives and viewed in context. In silo I can proof a response quote, but I can’t really judge its validity unless I know what its responding to, and why. I can proclaim to personally like or loathe an idea, but I can’t really judge its likelihood of success unless I know what success looks like.
We’re an industry that claims to champion brave, innovative, risk-taking thinking. Yet in these moments we seem quick to tear something down when it doesn’t meet our own, often personal, preference; brief and objectives and context be damned. What message are we sending – that these all matter less than having an egotistical opinion?
We’ve all been in meetings where the most senior / loudest / opinionated person (delete as appropriate) has shouted down the rest of the room, just because they can. In that moment, what did that do for your bravery, ability to innovate and desire to take risks?
Judgement: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
The truth is, when any work – from a rebrand to a creative campaign – is released into the wild, we lose agency over it. Audiences, intended or otherwise, will respond in whatever way they see fit, and no amount of insight and analysis, planning and strategising, or hard graft, can guarantee the outcome we want.
That’s the risk we take. Do we really need to publicly eat our own young while we do it?
I’m not naive enough to think that the Jaguar bloodbath isn’t simply an exercise in ‘expert’ self-promotion, or that anything I say here will suddenly tame the fame beast. But I do hope we can all be better judges, whatever the forum; championing thoughtful critique over knee-jerk negativity while faithfully observing the golden rule that objectives matter, and context is everything. Instead of rushing to be the loudest voice in the room, be the smartest. Especially when being smartest is knowing when to say nothing at all.
We absolutely need to use our powers of judgement to help make things better, but a little more “yes, and…” would work wonders.
If Jaguar’s objective was to achieve positive consensus from everyone in the creative industries, it has definitely, spectacularly failed.
But I wasn’t in the room when the brief was shared, so who am I to judge?
Phil Borge-Slavnich, Co-founder and Director.