The Jaguar CEO recently resigned in the wake of a controversial ad campaign the luxury car company released months ago in an effort to rebrand as “woke.”
After spending three years as CEO and three decades total with Jaguar Land Rover, Adrian Mardell will officially retire on Dec. 31, the company announced Thursday.
This comes following the recent release of American Eagle’s viral ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney—which some on the Left are accusing of being “Nazi propaganda” for celebrating the “great genes” of a healthy, beautiful white woman, while others are hailing the cultural shift away from gender-fluid, LGBTQ-heavy ads as exemplified by the Jaguar campaign.
The contentious ad Jaguar released last November featured androgynous models wearing bright colored, futuristic clothing, and it also introduced a revamped logo and slogan: “Copy Nothing.”
The ad also included other slogans: “create exuberant,” “live vivid,” “delete ordinary,” and “break moulds.”
Not a single car appeared in the entire 30-second ad.
Within 24 hours, the ad received almost 47 million views and tens of thousands of comments, with some comparing the ad campaign to Bud Light’s disastrous partnership with transgender actor Dylan Mulvaney.
“This is so the wrong timing for this. I can understand the C-suite being conned into this in 2022, but you have completely misread the moment. Bud Light 2.0,” said columnist Jon Gabriel on X after the ad’s release.
At the time, Jaguar released a statement to FOX Business defending the ad:
“Our brand relaunch for Jaguar is a bold and imaginative reinvention and, as expected, it has attracted attention and debate. As proud custodians at such a remarkable point in Jaguar’s history, we have preserved iconic symbols while taking a dramatic leap forward. The brand reveal is only the first step in this exciting new era, and we look forward to sharing more on Jaguar’s transformation in the coming days and weeks.”
Steve McKee, branding expert and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, disagreed, writing at the time, “Commandeering a longstanding and respected brand to proffer visions of a woke, androgynous utopia anathema to its target audience is unfocused at best, counterproductive at worst.”
The ad wasn’t the only move Jaguar made that sent its fortunes plummeting. Last summer, the company planned to phase out its final gasoline model in most markets. Jaguar, however, didn’t have any electric vehicles to replace those gasoline models yet, so many showrooms were virtually empty of Jaguar stock for about a year.
Jaguar sales in Europe declined 97.5% in April, compared to 2024, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Overall, sales are down 77.8% year-to-date over 2024.
The post Jaguar CEO to Retire Following Last Year’s Ad Controversy appeared first on The Daily Signal.