What the watch industry (and most other companies) can learn from the Jaguar re-brand…. And it’s not what you think.

Over the last week or 2 social media has been awash with commentary about the Jaguar re-brand. Some has been good, some has been bad, some has been useful, most hasn’t. Now that the dust has settled it could be worth taking a slightly more sober look at this and what people from all businesses could learn. I’m going to focus a bit on the watch industry, as that’s where my new venture lies, but this is appropriate to many other industries.

First, let's have a think about the purpose of a brand. Brands are a by-product of mass manufacturing. Before mass manufacturing, you bought your chairs from your local carpenter, your meat from your local butcher etc. They didn’t have to be branded because you trusted and knew the person that you were buying from. That person had to produce a good product because a bad one would damage their reputation and business instantly. 

With the advent of mass manufacturing brands developed to replace the trust that you had in your local producer. In the mass manufacturing era you didn’t know the person making what you wanted, but you could know the brand and therefore know that what you were buying was right to meet your needs. 

Brands developed to meet customers’ needs, and different brands developed for different needs. This isn’t just across sectors i.e. Nike is a sports brand and BMW is a car brand. It is within sectors themselves i.e. Unilever owns Ben & Jerry’s, Magnum, Cornetto, Carte D’or Vienetta and Walls. These are all ice-cream brands, but they cater for different people in the market and different consumption occasions. Unilever doesn’t want these brands to compete with each other, it wants them to compete with brands that they don’t own.

This brings us to Jaguar. Jaguar is part of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR). They own both the Jaguar and Land Rover brands and within Land Rover they have the Defender, Range Rover, Discovery, Velar and Evoque brands (which apparently they plan on separating from the Land Rover brand - I am not sure is a great idea, but that’s not for now). Within the group apparently cars branded with the Jaguar brand were selling about 4x less than the equivalent car branded with one of the Land Rover brands. Based on this alone there was absolutely no point in the JLR group making anything in the Jaguar brand. Would you make something with 4x less chance of success, when you could put all your money and effort into something 4x more likely to be a success?

This is one of the most important things that we need to consider when looking at this; I am willing to bet that more than 90% of the people who are complaining about the Jaguar re-brand would have chosen one of the Land Rover branded cars over a Jaguar branded car (all other things being equal). So, as far as the JLR group is concerned, what does it matter if those people don’t like their re-brand, not only were they not Jaguar customers, they were more likely to be Land Rover customers anyway. 

JLR needed to develop the Jaguar brand to appeal to a group of people who wouldn’t rather have a Land Rover anyway…. Otherwise the brand would be pointless.

The good news is that, as popular as the Land Rover brands are, there are plenty of people that don’t like them, and don’t like what the brands stand for. The Land Rover brands, especially Range Rover appeal to a certain type of person, not everyone wants to be that kind of person and quite a lot of people want to be the opposite of that kind of person.

Whether you like the Jaguar rebrand or not (and that’s not something I am trying to comment on here) you have to agree that the re-brand is very very much aimed at a very different crowd to any of the Land Rover brands. If it resonates with that group of people and that group of people is a big enough market for the brand to be successful, then the work is objectively successful, whether or not old fans of Morse, who’d rather have a Land Rover, like it.

So what can the watch industry (and you) learn from this?

The majority of the watch industry is basically a bit of expensive cosplay. Rolex lets you look like a successful business person. AP and Patek let you look like a successful business person who thinks they know more than others. Omega lets you play pretend at being James Bond or Neil Armstrong. Bell & Ross and Breitling let you play pretend at being a pilot. The list goes on.

Watches and cars are very similar in that the more expensive ones don’t really do anything that the less expensive ones don’t do. Based on obeying speed limits a Range Rover, a Porsche and a Ford KA will all get you to the same place in the same time. A Rolex, a Richard Mille and a Casio will all tell you the same time. Arguably the Casio will do a better job of actually keeping time. So the ‘benefit’ of the watch, or a car, isn’t down to what it technically does, it’s all down to what the brand stands for.  

People buy into brands; what the brand stands for, how that makes them feel and how the brand makes them look to others. That’s why people will pay £130k to travel at 30mph in a Range Rover instead of £50k to travel 30mph in a Hyundai Santa Fe, which looks pretty similar… and if you argue against this, it’s just proof of how bought into the brand concept you are (sorry)!!

What this means, in watches in particular, is that there is a huge opportunity to stand out if you can identify a section of the market that no one else is really catering for. Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs of a great way to identify this opportunity.

There are the cheap functional brands like Casio (I know people think it’s a grail watch - not the debate here!) operating at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - i.e. they perform a function. Arguably smart watches like Apple Watches and Garmin are also at the bottom of the hierarchy, being valued for their actual functionality. 

Most of the more premium watch brands operate in the middle of the hierarchy of needs; “Social belonging and the need for love” at the lower of the middle needs and “status and self-esteem” at the higher of the middle needs. 

Where are the brands operating at the top of the pyramid, at the self-actualisation level? They are few and far between. This is why Bill Gates wears a Casio watch and Mark Zuckerberg drives a VW golf…. They don’t need a status symbol to feel like a success, they are beyond that.

This is the opportunity that Detrash is after as a brand. We don’t want customers to be customers because they want a Rolex and don’t have the cash. We don’t care how much cash you have, and if you want to look like you have a load of cash, good for you, get the Rolex (or the fake), or play cosplay with any of the other brands. 

Detrash is for people at a higher level, for people who care about the world, for people who care about doing good in the world… and there’s a huge amount of space for other brands to join us, not just in the watch world, but in all other sectors. 

I am not sure if this is the type of brand that Jaguar may become too, who knows, but what is sure is that the JLR group have enough brands in the levels below, so it’s definitely an opportunity for them… and it could very well be an opportunity for you and your brand too.