Jaguar’s Confidence Deserves to Pay Off

This week I was lucky enough to be a guest of Jaguar Cars at one of the most impressive marketing events I have seen for ages.  The firm has started to take dealers, customers and other people (including PRs who know journalists) to their test facility at Gaydon in Warwickshire for a series of driving days. 

The guests cars were valet parked, we were signed in and driving credentials checked.   After a very elegant buffet lunch in a massive showroom with several cars on display and many Jaguar staff to serve refreshments, we (I was with the MD of a hotel group and David Parkin from TheBusinessDesk.com) started to notice a few celebs dotted around the room of 40 or so people.  Soon we were ushered into a very slick video and live presentation on the day ahead in a cinema style darkened room, and then paired with professional racing drivers (mine was a British Touring Car Championship driver) and before you could say ‘no cameras allowed’ we were cruising around the Aston Martin/Jaguar/Land Rover test track at 140mph! 

The thrill of the day was driving a 500 bhp XKR (I have a better memory for car information than anything else on earth) at 170mph down the 2 mile straight a few times, and screeching around sweeping bends at over 100mph with no fear of Plod appearing in my rear view mirror. 

The day was amazing as a motorsport and driving fan, but it was the commitment to a brand strategy that I was impressed with overall.  The company has launched three very exciting cars in the past 5 years with the aim of making the brand younger, cooler, more desirable and vital.  The designers have cracked it in my opinion (and that of many car journos too) but having a great product isn’t enough, they had the problem of a legacy image to deal with. 

The confidence to keep investing heavily in marketing at a time when sales dropped off a cliff last year though must have been tough, even with such a cracking product.  They realised they needed to have people experience the product, touch it, sit in it, feel the interiors and that is expensive, compared to simply putting adverts in front of people.  

Jaguar have have stuck to their guns and thrown millions at getting potential current or future customers to have another look at a brand that had become tied to figures like Arthur Daly, John Prescott and retired golf club secretary types. 

They have cooler/more glamorous customers now, some I dare say on freebies but some paying customers.  Trevor Nelson, GMTV’s Andrew Castle  and Carol Vorderman were all there on the day I attended, OK, they aren’t exactly A listers like George Clooney  or Lily Allen, but they are younger and more attractive than the pipe smoker I used to think drove the cars.

Their approach to cultivating strong envoys will I am sure pay off.  I have waxed lyrical about the cars I drove since Tuesday as I am sure have 100 or so other people lucky enough to be invited that day, and the hundreds more throughout the week. 

At a time when the parent company is facing well-publicised problems, it is heartening to see long term thinking and some confidence in the power of marketing, as these types of well-conceived and delivered experience marketing activities are what will deliver business in 2010 and beyond.  Some ballsy marketers have fought their corners within Jaguar, persuaded FDs and others that the way to keep growing the value of the Jaguar brand that has seen so much production investment in the past decade is to make sure people know how good their product now is.  With that determination and the foresight to invest in excellent marketing they deserve to succeed, and I am now a very big fan of the brand.

Now all they need is some government help.  We need policy makers in Westminster incentivise police forces to buy British cars.  A number of police authorities are trialling Jags again like in the 60’s instead of Volvos, BMWs, Subarus and other foreign vehicles. 

From my experience, not much would get away from them, we would all know how fast they now were, UK jobs would be created building then and we’d almost be proud when we got a ticket!