Robert discusses JLR ‘House of Brands’ and other re-branding mishaps.
If you follow what happens in the motor industry like we do, you will have noticed that recently Jaguar Land Rover has embarked on a rebranding exercise of their own, which involves completely forgetting the 75 year-old Land Rover name and making each vehicle model a ‘brand’ under their House of Brands umbrella.
These are questions that ought to be considered when a company decides it’s time to shake things up and give the company a fresh look.
What does Land Rover mean to you? It doesn’t mean all that much to me as I’ve never been in the market for one, but I can tell you what it means to other people. It is a heritage brand, and despite not necessarily being the best or most reliable or most value for money, the Land Rover brand means a lot to people. That’s why if you visit the countryside, the chances are you’ll pass a farmer at some point driving a 50 year-old Defender. He could’ve probably had a new one by now, but he loves his Defender like he loves his old Barbour jacket, or his dog. It works for him, it’s simple to run and cheap to fix. It’s not a status symbol by any means.
Of course, in the past few years Land Rover has evolved in to a status symbol, offering more models and widening their market to entice people with money who wouldn’t necessarily need a capable off roader, but like the status and driving position that comes with one. This approach has worked very well for them indeed, which is why they’re able to sell a brand new Range Rover *starting* at £103,720, with the fully loaded long-wheelbase SV topping out at over £240,000.
So, you’re Mr Land Rover and you’re presented with this dilemma:
Option A: Do nothing. Maintain the status quo, it ain’t broke so don’t fix it. Sure, it’s a 75 year-old brand loved by farmers in their fusty old Defenders, but that’s not putting anyone off from dropping six figures on a brand new range rover.
Option B: Alienate your core customer base of diehard Land Rover – lovers by scrapping the 75 year-old brand and name to chase after the new money (which you’ve already got a decent share of) by implementing a confusing re-brand strategy including a new set of branding guidelines that includes such gems as:
‘Avoid cliched Britishness’.
‘Communicate payment options and methods discretely’.
And the best strategy yet if you want to sell loads of cars:
‘‘Move from indiscrete, price-led, traditional advertising and mass client events to unique brand communication and tailored client experiences’.
Yes, you’ve interpreted that correctly. Don’t tell your customers if you’ve got a good deal on offer, instead turn the process of buying a new car into the same process of buying a luxury watch or handbag. Re-invent the wheel.
So, which option do you think they went with?
Look, I can perfectly understand their approach, and it would be perfect if they were selling Rolexes or Hermes Birkin bags. As someone who used to work in a jewellery shop, we didn’t go for big banners saying ‘SALE NOW ON’ or ‘0% FINANCE AVAILABLE’ plastered all over the shop. However, the difference is that when you’re buying a nice watch or handbag, you don’t get rid of it for a slightly newer model after three years. It’s a completely different market to buying a car, and JLR (as they’re now known) have completely missed that point.
The solution was there all along: keep doing what you’re doing. God only knows the vast number of failed re-brands that have happened over the years. Take MasterCard for example, one of the most recognisable brands in the world, who tried to rebrand in 2006. Nobody understood it or liked it, and they sharp reverted back to their old logo, before settling on a new one in 2016 that wasn’t too dissimilar to their old one (it’s still not great but it’s a hell of a lot better than their last attempt).
An even more relevant example would be Burberry, who re-discovered their heritage this year. Similar to Land Rover, Burberry are a proudly British brand and they have over 120 years’ worth of history. Like a lot of brands back in 2018, Burberry rebranded to be as generic and ‘high fashion’ as possible because that’s where the money was. As you can see below, they really fell in with the ‘sans-serif generic fashion house crowd’.
Luckily, their new company director has seen the light and reverted to a version of their logo that they’ve used for the past 120 years. They realised that it wasn’t broke, they didn’t need to fix it, and they were just throwing away over a century’s worth of brand heritage in order to go with the crowd.
What’s the lesson here then? Well, I’d say that if you’re doing something right, why drastically transform what you’re doing in the hopes of appealing even more to a very small (yet very wealthy) minority in the hope that they’ll spend more cash with you, even though that hasn’t stopped them from doing so in the past. We can only hope that Land Rover do a Burberry or a MasterCard and go back to their old ways, for their sake more than anything. Now I’m not saying I’m against progress or innovation – I think keeping it fresh and relevant is one of the most important things a brand can do. However, changing your football team’s kit from black and white stripes to red and white because some marketing guru has looked at the data and thinks the team will sell 10% more shirts because of trends in the market doesn’t sit well with me. It’s akin to selling your soul for a few extra quid, and as we’ve seen in the above examples it very rarely works – otherwise why would companies change back to what they’ve done before? I think it’s only a matter of time before JLR do the same. Evolution instead of revolution.
Now, it is possible to have a drastic change of image without having to rebrand. It can very easily be done, and bless them, JLR did almost get it right. It’s through changing your advertising to appeal to the customers you want. I’ll be the first one to say, having seen a before and after image of their new advertising as part of their rebranding strategy, I was really impressed. Their new images were de-cluttered, and showed off more what the brand was all about, from a Defender in the depths of a rainforest, to a Discovery sitting on top of a sand dune. These ads appeal to the heart of the consumer, and make them think ‘this could be me’, even if they know that their new Range Rover will only ever scale the heady heights of a multi storey car park.
Their new strategy for advertising is ‘less is more’ and I think this approach works well. They can target exactly which customers they want as well using social media, the internet and algorithms. They can tailor their approach to the type of wealthy customers they want, and it doesn’t have to be ‘one size fits all’. But they took it a step too far and messed it all up. So close yet so far for JLR then.
I suppose we can tie this in with what we do here at Get Carter Productions – we can transform your current approach to advertising by giving you our best advice. We love it when our customers are daring. In the same notion, if one of our customers told us they wanted something completely ridiculous and off brand, or potentially detrimental to them, we would also advise them in order to keep their best interests at heart. So get in touch! Drop me a line if you want to talk about your audio, if you want to talk about the pros and cons of rebranding, or if you think I’m talking a load of shite – please let me know.
