Since establishing in-house agency Spark 44 a few years back, Jaguar’s ‘Alive’ campaign has strived to inject a little animalistic danger into the luxury car brand. Specifically, Jaguar’s sporty F-Type was taken out of the garage and unleashed on the world in a series of spots that the cars behaving like the wild jungle cats they were named after. The ads were…okay. But, they were still a step forward for a brand that didn’t have a reputation for producing many TV spots (other than EuroRSCG’s break out “Gorgeous” from almost a decade ago).
So it’s surprising to see Jaguar, which has put so much behind the look and messaging of “Alive” (including this weird Lana Del Rey thing), to pivot and produce a comedic takedown of Mercedes-Benz’s “Magic Body Control” TV spot from September with “Jaguar vs. Chicken”. You see, as Jaguar posits, jaguars eat chickens, haha! So take that, Mercedes! Haha! Yeah! Jaguars are better!
This is the second video this month which has marked a strange tonal shift from the brand. On December 10th, the brand released their “take” on viral cat videos, which again seems very out of step with how they’ve been marketing the brand since 2011. As there are no credits, I don’t know if this is still the work of Spark 44 or not, but it will be interesting to see if Jaguar continues on their path away from luxury and toward silliness.