A few weeks ago, Jaguar the car brand ran a new advertising campaign. It was so bad that it had everybody on the Internet talking about Jaguar for a few days.
That sneaky result is not what this email is about. Instead, I want to tell you about something more interesting, and much more value, at least if you sell your own products or services.
I recently watched an old BBC clip, from 1968, titled, “What’s next for Jaguar?”
Jaguar had just come out with a new model then. “Every inch a Jaguar,” said the journalist as he explained all the new features and design choices.
But in the more leisurely pace of 1960s TV, this segment also talked about the history of Jaguar as a company.
It explained how Jaguar had become such an established brand that people would immediately recognize Jaguar design elements, even if the car had no name plate on the back or little cat figurine on the hood.
So let me tell you how Jaguar done it, and trust me, it’s worthwhile reading:
Jaguar was started by two racing enthusiasts. At first, they made sidecars for motorbikes. They then started making race cars.
And they were great at it. Their cars, first called SS, for Swallow Sidecar Company, had both great performance and half the price tag of comparable alternatives like Rolls-Royce and Bentley.
The SS branding was dropped after World War II due to sounding a little Nazi-like, and the company took the name of its main model, Jaguar.
But there was still a problem. Like I said, Jaguar cars had great performance and were cheap. What’s not to love?
Well, the CHEAP. Jaguar suffered from being seen as “budget luxury.” Maybe something like a Mazda Miata today. Yes, a Miata is kind of a sports car… but it ain’t no Porsche.
Let me pause for a moment to say, with all delicacy, that maybe something similar applies to you. Maybe you offer a great service or product, at a really great price.
The market should love it. They should be grateful to you. They should line up at your door.
But they don’t. It’s counterintuitive and stupid. But it’s reality.
So maybe you try to increase prices. But people won’t pay more, or pay anything at all, because they don’t know WHY they should.
What then? Back to Jaguar.
How did Jaguar transform? How did they go from the Miata of the 1930s, to a premium brand in the 1960s, coveted by boys and businessmen alike, driven by celebs like Steve McQueen, Tony Curtis, and Frank Sinatra?
Simple. And I’ll tell you. But first I want you to promise you’ll hold your breath for a moment, instead of immediately blurting out, “Oh but how can that possibly be useful to me!”
Ready? Breathe in, and hold it:
Jaguar’s rebranding trick was to win a series of races in the 1950s, culminating with the biggest race of them all, Le Mans.
Jaguar won Le Mans five times in the 1950s. In 1957, Jaguar took five of the first six places, against competition like Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz and Maserati.
Jaguar got out of racing after that. It was too expensive to maintain a team. But the brand was established, and it’s stuck with us for 70+ years since, until perhaps this new advertising campaign.
“Poof!” you finally burst out with an exhale. “I knew it! How can that possibly be useful to me!”
True. If maintaining a racing division was too expensive for Jaguar to keep doing, it’s probably too expensive for you and your business.
Still, if you think a bit, there might be things you can do, in your own industry, to create the same effect. There might be competitions, contests, or other entirely different things you can do. Because to me, winning races like Le Mans gave Jaguar three things at the core:
1. A ranking with a clear number 1
2. An incontestable result, a matter of performance, not popularity or opinion
3. An element of glamour
Like I said, if you think, search, or scheme a bit, you might be able to find opportunities that will give you all three of these. For example, in the world of direct-response copywriting, this is what “winning the control” did for a freelance copywriter.
Even one or two such results can establish your brand for years or decades to come.
But even if you cannot find a way to get all three elements above for your product or service, you might be able to get two out of three. And that can still be supremely valuable.
To prove it, I’ll give you three examples, over my next three emails, of dominant businesses built on top of having just two out of the three elements above.
For today though, let me remind you of my Daily Email Habit service. It has nothing to do with today’s email. Except of course it does, because I wrote it based on today’s Daily Email Habit prompt. For more information about this service, and to get the prompt that’s coming tomorrow: