Influx

With various analysts and commentators talking up the arrival of new luxury, what does it mean of you are the venerable Jaguar car brand owned by the Ford Motor Company? Can you be mass and luxury at the same time? The European bastions of automotive luxury, BMW and Mercedes obviously believe this can be achieved as they have introduced the respective 1 series and C class models.

So, what’s gone wrong at Jaguar? The brand is leaking money, sales are down and this week, Ford announced the closure of the famous Coventry plant with the loss of 1,000 jobs.

Ford wants Jaguar to go mainstream fast and is forcing the unit to share more components from its sister companies in the Ford line. Driving economies of scale and cutting costs is not a substitute for building a brand.

To succeed, Ford needs to re-discover the brand soul of Jaguar and bring it to life through exciting and innovative design and marketing. Design needs to be lead marketing. To find the brand soul, Ford must go back to the Jaguar of the late 1950s and 1960s, a time when the brand had classic British sports car credentials and re-interpret this to create a brand icon, a star model; Jaguar’s equivalent of the Ford GTO.

jaguar’s design history

To find the formula, Ford needs only to look at the development of the Audi TT, a model that gave the stoic Audi brand, sportier credentials. The TT design was in essence, a summation of the best of Audis past. To quote Thomas Freeman, the designer of the TT “the TT is about Audi’s long history: It’s about racing; it’s about technology; it’s about Auto Union [the manufacturing conglomerate of the 1930s that Audi was a part of]. And it’s also totally original.”

If Ford can find Jaguar’s soul, create an icon model and find a way of bringing that energy to their marketing, they can make the Jaguar brand, not only relevant again, but also achieve their goal of competing in the new luxury space.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2004/nf20040923_1429_db046.htm

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/30/thomas.html