Sydney Sweeney does an ad for jeans, media throws a hissy fit

[LurkerJ]

Darc Requiem said:

LurkerJ said:

I don't disagree that the Jaguar ad sucks, but one of the metrics of a successful ad is getting people to watch it and talk about it. In an age in which attention is a very expensive currency, I think it's an achievement that we're talking about either ad campaigns. And while the Jaguar ad sucks, one cannot ignore that the negative reactions were majorly fuelled by the crowd that shouts and ready to go off "go-woke-go-broke" at the slightest hint of "diversity". As someone who has been critical of the left in the last 10 years for their overzealous policing of thoughts, I just can't see how the anti-DEI crowd isn't much worse in their trigger-ability and stupidity. 

As for the Jaguar ad being a recipe for a disaster, I see a lot of bad ads by Apple, and not every Nintendo ad is my cup of tea either, but they hardly influence my buying decision. I don't know if Jaguar went bust because of that ad. Maybe something for me to look into. 

All these corporations are full of shit anyway. They will fly the LGBT flag when the vibe is right, and they will burn them down the minute they think it's going to become inconvenient to their bottom line. 

Jaguar sales tanked after their new ad campaign. It was a catastrophic decline. 97.5% decline to be more specifc. People raging online isn't necessarily a reflection of general sentiment. However, in the case of Jaguar, the general reaction was not good. If a company rolls out an ad campaign that tanks their sales. The ad campaign bad. At this point, I don't care about whatever buzzword people toss around. DEI, Woke, etc. They get tossed around ad nauseum until they lose all meaning. What's the reality of the situation? That's the only thing that matters. People have raged on line about things that have done well. The problem I see with ads on the whole is that companies often assume the online reaction reflects reaction of the general public. Sometime it's the vocal minority and sometimes it's the canary in the coal mine that signals a need to change course. 

https://autos.yahoo.com/articles/jaguars-wild-electric-gt-range-153700079.html

Thank you for the information above.

I've just had a look online to see exactly how a company can have almost 100% decline in sales after an ad campaign, there is a lot more to the story than just the ads being bad. 

Jaguar effectively halted production of ALL of their cars, and that decision was made way before the ad campaign rolled out. Early 2024 to be specific. Jaguar intentionally ceased production of nearly all its internal combustion models months before launching its new ad campaign. That means dealerships had minimal or no inventory before the new ads even released. 

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a60075224/jaguar-gas-cars-production-ending/ March 2024

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/business/jaguar-has-stopped-building-xe-xf-and-f-type-i-pace-and-e-pace-stop-decJuly 2024

the sales slump is due to a planned production hiatus until their EV line up is ready, that was inevitably going to affect the numbers in 2025. Now, whether we think this is a good business decision or a bad one is a separate matter, but it's clearly not tied to the ad campaign.

then you have the Jaguar Land Rover line that was heavily impacted by Trump's tariff, shipments to the US were paused for an entire month, and when shipments resumed, they started selling them at a higher price. Looking further, this doesn't seem to be relevant since the 97.5% decline you quoted doesn't include the Land Rover cars, which makes sense, the decline only affected cars that went into production hiatus. 

Happy to be corrected as I am not an expert, but really it doesn't seem like the cryptic online ad campaign wasn't all that significant. The ads were for cars that are not going to be ready until 2026 anyway, and they were released online months after the critical business decisions have been made.

Last edited by LurkerJ - on 01 August 2025