Considered Chaos 02: The Death of the Woke Rebrand

The unavoidable controversy that’s dominated marketing headlines the past few weeks: Jaguar’s rebrand.

It’s as close as our industry comes to a monocultural event. Jaguar is a quintessentially Boomer brand, alongside all the other conservative-coded icons that constitute Britain’s fading cultural myth: Bond, Barbour, Dunhill. It’s stuffy and steeped in post-imperial nostalgia.

That makes it catnip for the armchair CD class.

Myself I’m less interested in the rebrand itself than the reactions, which I’ll use to pick apart a concept that’s been swimming in my mind for the past year:

The era of the ‘woke’ rebrand is over - and it’s the best possible thing for progress.

Birth of the woke industrial complex

‘Woke’ branding effectively began its life as a response the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2016. As social unrest boiled over into property damage (in premium districts, no less!), the Capital class developed a belief brands would need to promote progressive social policies in order to maintain their social license to operate.

This was fueled by consumer research about an incoming generation that ‘would only buy brands aligned to their values’, and the Chief Bullshit Officer Simon Sinek who offered an era-defining, market-friendly solution: ‘Brand Purpose’.

The premise was that a brand driven by a higher ‘why’ would build stronger emotional connections with like-minded customers, inspiring internal teams, ultimately leading to higher profitability. ‘Purpose Creates Profit’ was effectively brand’s Fukuyama-ist moment: we had finally arrived at the end of history, liberal capitalism’s final form.

Over the next half decade we would see the Purpose doctrine sweep the brand world to varying effect: some effective, some clumsy, and some downright absurd.

My own pet conspiracy theory is the M&M mascot rebrand was a psy-op deliberately crafted to make the left look stupid - precisely nobody asked for this, especially not the queer community.

Bubbling up around the same time, the term ‘woke’ began being co-opted by the right as an insult.

The right has never been able to clearly define what ‘woke’ is, instead it’s pointed to symbols of wokeness: black mermaids, or Trans women promoting terrible beer.

And yet the term managed to cross over from extremist circles well into the mainstream (which is why you have your fair share of Australian politicians using it). Of course much of this can be put down to reactionary dogwhistling. But it seems that while wokeness can’t be cohesively described, it can be felt.

In essence, woke is a vibe.

And fundamentally I believe woke is a vibe of dissonance. It’s the dissonance between a publicly performed ‘progressive’ social view against an extremely normative economic view. It’s the pantomime of out-of-touch corporates posting black squares while continuing to contribute to the destruction of our environment and middle class.

An idea that’s dissolved into an aesthetic.

You could call it ‘woke-core’.

Jaguar’s ‘Woke’ rebrand and the need for substance over style

The ‘core-ification of woke’ is what leads us to Jaguar.

What I found most interesting about the response to the rebrand was how many people seized upon it as an example that Jaguar had ‘gone woke’.

Let’s remember what we’re effectively all so up in arms about is a single teaser (that, admittedly, does look like it an awful lot like an H&M campaign generated exclusively in Midjourney).

But no accompanying sponsorships. No bold social agenda. People will point to Jaguar’s presence at the Virgin Attitude Awards as an example of the ‘wokeness’ infiltrating the business, but it was a speech given at a D&I ceremony, what the fuck did you think they were going to talk about, exhaust pipes?

With the Jaguar rebrand instead what we have is ‘wokeness’ distilled down into pure symbology: a nominally diverse cast of characters who all look like they live in SoHo, abrasive pops of colour, copy that speaks to vague promises of metamorphosis. Even the actual vehicle reveal has done little to shift that part of the conversation - The most amusing reaction I saw yet was a twitter chud calling the colour schemes ‘transgender pink and Soyboy blue’.

Rebrands have always been dangerous things, but never more so than now. The political climate is such that the very act of updating symbols of tradition, no matter how ineffectual that tradition is in driving sales, can be seen to be the same as holding a disdain for the past (although, in fairness, Jaguar’s social media comments have not helped).

I’m not saying that the ‘woke’ conversation is not full of bad actors but I do believe part of the mainstream acceptance of the anti-woke movement is driven by a rebellion against a lack of substance. After a decade of cheap money we are returning to an era where businesses need to actually solve real problems. Instead of endlessly strategising and pontificating brands will live and die based on what they do.

American politicians have just learned this the hard way. The election result was, among many things, a recognition of how little effect the public performance of progressiveness has had in actually shifting values and opinions about the communities they’re supposed to be helping. Over the next four years many will (hopefully) switch up their tactics.

Brand-as-Doing means having a genuine understanding of customers as people, not just caricatures. It means hanging out where they want to be, knowing how to co-operate, not co-opt their culture. And it means delivering products and experiences that actually enrich their lives. These are the types of questions I find myself working with clients on most - how to treat your brand as an operating system, not a skin.

This applies, by the way, to D&I practices. This is not the time to pull back on meaningful action within diversity and inclusion, but it is time to boot branding the fuck out of it. Do the work to reconcile your internal values and your actions, but don’t treat it as a pathway to profitability.

Because a true purpose doesn’t create profit, it sacrifices it.

Vale Woke Rebrand. It’s time for the real work to begin.

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