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Jaguar boss defends rebrand after backlash
The scale of the backlash last month following Jaguar’s 30-second teaser trailer in which a group of brightly dressed models, but no actual cars, was rather over the top.
The adverts came with a “Copy nothing” tagline, channelling Jaguar founder William Lyons, while signalling a decisive break with the company’s past as an old school luxury brand.
If it was designed to attract attention, it certainly succeeded; critics included Elon Musk and Nigel Farage.
But today, Jaguar is keen to focus on its plan to be “bold and disruptive” with its new electric car and redesign, announced last night in Miami.
Managing director Rawdon Glover told Sky News:
“We’ve certainly gathered an awful lot of attention over the last few weeks, but now I think its really important to talk about the vehicle.”
As Glover points out, few car launches get quite as much attention, adding that the industry is at a crucial point:
We need to make sure that Jaguar is relevant, is desirable, is future proof for the next 90 years of its history.
“At the moment, the industry is going through huge disruption: technology changes, as we all figure out actually what an electrified world means for our brand.
“At Jaguar, we’ve looked at that and we think we have to make a really bold step forward. But actually, the step we’re going to take is completely in keeping in ethos with the brand.”
Glover was also pressed about the backlash against that advert, and insisted:
“We absolutely don’t want to alienate any of our loyal fans.
“Quite the opposite – we want to take as many of our current fans with us on that journey… We need to also appeal to a new audience. That’s what we need to do.”
Key events
Tiz the season for annual forecasts, and investment bank Saxo has got into the Christmas spirit by releasing its latest Outrageous Predictions, for 2025.
These are events which are highly unlikely, but not impossible, and which would send shockwaves across financial markets if they did occur. The kind of things to keep at the back of the mind, just in case.
And here’s this year’s list:
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Trump 2.0 blows up the US dollar
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Nvidia balloons to twice the value of Apple
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China unleashes CNY 50 trillion stimulus to reflate economy
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First bio-printed human heart ushers in new era of longevity
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Electrification boom ends OPEC
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US imposes AI data centre tax as power prices run wild
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A natural disaster bankrupts a large insurance company for the first time
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Pound erases post-Brexit discounts versus the Euro
Anti-Barclays protets at FT Banking Summit
Kalyeena Makortoff
Protesters are out in full force ahead of an appearance by Barclays CEO CS Venkatakrishnan at the FT Banking Summit in London this morning.
Dozens of activists are gathered outside of the Convene Centre near St Pauls – next to the London Stock Exchange – where Venkatakrishan is due to be interviewed as part of the FT Banking Summit at 10:15am.
They’re protesting what they claim is the UK bank’s support for arms companies supplying Israel in its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
Barclays has long been a target for both climate and anti-war campaigners, some of whom have vandalised Barclays branches across the UK in protest. Venkatakrishnan has continued to condemn their behaviour, and said this summer that he believed public opinion was more balanced that the protesters would lead some to believe.
NatWest CEO: We’re on fast trak to private ownership
Kalyeena Makortoff
NatWest CEO Paul Thwaite says the bank is on a “fast trajectory to private ownership”, with the government likely to fully exit its stake within the first half of 2025.
Kicking the FT Banking Summit at the Convene Centre near London’s St Paul’s Cathedral this morning, Thwaite said this will be “symbolic” for both NatWest staff and the entire banking sector, allowing the industry to close another chapter of the fallout from the 2008 banking crash.
The Treasury spent nearly £46bn to bailout NatWest – back when it was known as Royal Bank of Scotland – at the height of the financial crisis. The resulting nationalisation left taxpayers owning around 84% of the lender.
But a rapid sell-off over the past year has cut the remaining public stake in Natwest from 38% in December 2023 to just under 11% today.
Thwaite says:
“Absent some big kind of dislocation and economic events, you know, we’ll be back to private ownership next year, maybe as early the first half of the year, and that will be a great moment”
And reaching that point will mean the bank can draw a line under a tumultuous chapter in the bank’s near-300 year history, Thwaite explained:
“It means we can talk about the future of the bank and the potential of the bank, rather than having to talk about its past. So yeah, all, as you say, All things being well, but I think we’re on a very fast trajectory to private ownership, and I’m very proud of that”
The Telegraph loves it! And hates it!
Jaguar’s new concept car has been given the thumbs up, by the Daily Telegraph. And, er, the thumbs down too.
Despite not usually being a fan of change, El Tel is hailing the new electric car as “a design triumph” in an early review this morning.
Their motoring correspondent, Andrew English, writes:
Certainly Jaguar has traditionally been at its best when it’s done something different, but this strategy is also fantastically risky – even if it is perhaps the only path left open. For all the misleading and occasionally barbed PR and social media, it’s all window dressing until the new car is in the showrooms and they’re trying to sell it. Then the truth will out.
One can’t help wishing them luck and hoping that McGovern is right when he says in uncharacteristically modest tone: “We’re taking Jaguar back to a time when it was truly loved, because it was unique.”
The bodywork of the concept car, English reports, is “largely unadorned”, but with details including “almost industrial slatted ventilator panels at front and rear”, and the raw brass hinge-out panels at the base of the front wings containing the rear-view cameras.
The two-seat interior is “ voluptuous” with a suitcase rack behind.
English got a peek at Jaguar’s concept car yesterday at Gaydon, the company’s headquarters (The Guardian declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), so couldn’t go).
He reports that the new car has a long, untreated brass interior door handle, which will react with the sweat on hands to produce “a distinctive odour”.
That, apparently, is a good thing. Mary Crisp, chief of materiality design, explains:
“It’s about how car materials age.
They don’t have to stay the same, they can grow and change during the life of the vehicle.”
But…. down the corridor at the Telegraph, Matthew Lynn reckons the ‘Barbie’ relaunch is a disaster for an iconic brand, adding:
And instead of breaking new ground, and revolutionising the way its machines are designed as promised, it looks, well, sort of like a lot of the other upmarket cars on the market. It could be the new Audi, Tesla, or Lexus.
Video: At the Jaguar launch
400k more people in work in UK than thought
Britain’s economic inactivity problem isn’t quite as bad as feared, the country’s statistics body has revealed.
The Office for National Statistics has updated its assessment of the labour force, based on new population estimates – a calculation that has increased the number of 16 to 64 year olds in the UK by 484,000.
This has lifted the estimated number of people in work by 402,000 in the April-June quarter, while the number unemploywed has been raised by 30,000.
An extra 60,000 people were economically inactive – neither in work nor looking for a job – the ONS estimates.
These changes mean the the employment rate is revised up 0.1 percentage points to 74.6% in April to June 2024, while the unemployment rate is largely unchanged at 4.2% and the economic inactivity rate is down 0.1 percentage points to 22.1%.
These changes, though, won’t fix the wider peoblems with the ONS’s labour force statistics, which have been hampered by low response rates.
It says today it has reweighted data going back to 2019, and will release the results on 17 December with its next jobs report.
Speaking in Miami last night, Jaguar’s creative chief Professor Gerry McGovern has said that the new brand was “influenced by the desire to recapture the essence of Jaguar’s original creative conviction”.
PA Media reports:
“Some may love it now, some may love it later and some may never love it. That’s what fearless creativity does,” he said, citing David Bowie, Vivienne Westwood and architect Richard Rogers as some of his creative heroes
“They were British trailblazers who challenged convention and had no desire to copy the norm.
“Controversy has always surrounded British creativity when it’s been at its best.”
Among the design work on the new Jag is a laser-etching of the Jaguar logo in brass ingots on each side of the car.
You get into the vehicle through two “butterfly” doors; inside are three hand-finished brass lines which run the length of the interior. One, down the middle, splits a pair of floating instrument panels.
The “floating” front seats are finished in a wool blend which is also used on the flooring and other areas.
Photos: the new Jag concept car
Here are more photos of the Type 00 concept car from Miami overnight:
Adrian Mardell, JLR’s chief executive officer, is promising “spectacular” results from Jaguar’s new shift, saying:
The magic of Jaguar is close to my heart – an original British luxury brand unmatched in its heritage, artistry and emotional magnetism.
That’s the Jaguar we are recapturing and we will create the same sense of awe that surrounded iconic models like the E‑type. Our journey is already underway, guided by our original ethos to Copy Nothing – and the results will be spectacular.”
Jaguar boss defends rebrand after backlash
The scale of the backlash last month following Jaguar’s 30-second teaser trailer in which a group of brightly dressed models, but no actual cars, was rather over the top.
The adverts came with a “Copy nothing” tagline, channelling Jaguar founder William Lyons, while signalling a decisive break with the company’s past as an old school luxury brand.
If it was designed to attract attention, it certainly succeeded; critics included Elon Musk and Nigel Farage.
But today, Jaguar is keen to focus on its plan to be “bold and disruptive” with its new electric car and redesign, announced last night in Miami.
Managing director Rawdon Glover told Sky News:
“We’ve certainly gathered an awful lot of attention over the last few weeks, but now I think its really important to talk about the vehicle.”
As Glover points out, few car launches get quite as much attention, adding that the industry is at a crucial point:
We need to make sure that Jaguar is relevant, is desirable, is future proof for the next 90 years of its history.
“At the moment, the industry is going through huge disruption: technology changes, as we all figure out actually what an electrified world means for our brand.
“At Jaguar, we’ve looked at that and we think we have to make a really bold step forward. But actually, the step we’re going to take is completely in keeping in ethos with the brand.”
Glover was also pressed about the backlash against that advert, and insisted:
“We absolutely don’t want to alienate any of our loyal fans.
“Quite the opposite – we want to take as many of our current fans with us on that journey… We need to also appeal to a new audience. That’s what we need to do.”
Introduction: Jaguar Type 00 unveiled in Miami
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets, and the world economy.
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,” as Oscar Wilde reminded us. And carmaker Jaguar has avoided the latter fate, in the build-up to the unveiling of its vision for its new electric car.
After an advertising campaign that led to accusations Jaguar was brusquely ditching its old followers, it now unveiled its Type 00 electric model at Miami Art Week in Florida.
Described as as “design vision concept,” Jaguar says the model is a “concept with bold forms and exuberant proportions to inspire future Jaguars”.
Shown in two colours, Miami Pink and London Blue, it has a long bonnet, 23‑inch alloy wheels, and a glassless rear tailgate. That means you can’t look out through the back window, and must use rear-view cameras installed near the front wheel instead.
But this is just the first step.
Jaguar’s first production car under this new strategy will be an electric four‑door GT, which will be unveiled late next year.
This new model will target a range of up to 770km/478 miles. under the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure testing system, while rapid charging will add 200 miles of charge in 15 minutes.
Jaguar’s chief creative officer, professor Gerry McGovern OBE, says:
Type 00 is a pure expression of Jaguar’s new creative philosophy. It has an unmistakable presence. This is the result of brave, unconstrained creative thinking, and unwavering determination.
It is our first physical manifestation and the foundation stone for a new family of Jaguars that will look unlike anything you’ve ever seen. A vision which strives for the highest level of artistic endeavour.
The agenda
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8.25am GMT: FT Banking Summit in London, including NatWest CEO Paul Thwaite, Barclays CEO CS Venkatakrisnan, and former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe
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9:45am GMT: Treasury Committee hearing on Work of the FCA
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3pm GMT: US JOLTS survey of job openings
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