Insights
Insights
Jaguar vs Volvo is a battle of hearts and minds according to our Director of Strategy Shelby Haslam. Read her thoughts on this week's debate...
Well, it’s been a busy week in the world of automotive marketing!
Jaguar rebrand
Jaguar will have hoped a radical redesign and new market positioning would awaken interest in a new generation of car buyers. They perhaps wouldn’t have expected the outpouring of shock and ridicule for the new brand everywhere from LinkedIn to the Daily Mail.
Much criticism has come from agency folk, perhaps slightly biased in their opinion of a major brand revolution delivered by an in-house team, but there is genuine concern over whether Jaguar has thrown the baby out with the bathwater in seemingly abandoning everything that we know and love about the brand.
Volvo advert by Hoyte Van Hoytema
But what Jaguar’s move has done is to shine a light on Volvo’s campaign for its EX90 model. Originally launched in September, their ad breaks every rule for a digital campaign, with a four-minute film that slowly and quietly tells a story before ultimately delivering its product message. Feeds are now filling with people pointing to the Volvo campaign as the perfect example of how to do car advertising, with unfavourable comparisons to Jaguar’s approach.
So which will win out?
The great thing about having spent many years developing brands and campaigns for clients across sectors is that it gives you the confidence to say that marketing often does not, and should not, have the answers that a brand needs. That the most important view of our brand is not ours, but that held by our customers and clients.
#AudienceFuelled is not a new mantra for Mobas, but its one that we’re increasingly recognising the value of. Great brands and campaigns draw on those things that customers love about us, presented in a way that is most relevant to them. That way the response is made with their hearts, not just their heads.
Jaguar or Volvo?
Jaguar may go on to show how their new brand will resonate with the customer that they want for the future, but you can’t help but ask why there aren’t more of their wonderful and very contemporary existing brand values and purpose present in the new brand? Why is so little of what customers already love them for not relevant for the future customer?
Volvo on the other hand looks into our hearts, sees why we love their brand and presents us with a campaign that feels like we’ve already made the right choice in thinking about Volvo as being the best way to protect our families. The fact that they’ve applied that beautiful ‘golden thread’ to the new tech in the EX90 (spoiler alert) ultimately looking at the pedestrian rather than the driver. makes it even more powerful.
So whether you’re in-house or in agency let’s remember that the most important view of your product isn’t yours, it’s the customer’s and worry less about what’s in their heads and more about how they feel in their hearts.
