AUSTIN, TEXAS — A stripped back menu, critical supply shortages and one of the most controversial rebrands in recent memory. These were some of the setbacks that marketing leaders discussed at an event moderated by The Female Quotient, a media platform for women in business, around the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference last weekend. In each case, the stumbling blocks were not described as outright failures, but rather bumps in the road that resulted in more robust brands, whether in relation to helping realize a purpose-driven mission or shoring up team resilience.
“We’re all stronger for it,” said Charlotte Blank, U.S. CMO of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) North America, describing publicly for the first time how she navigated the backlash to Jaguar’s divisive rebrand last year. “It was one of those times that, when you go through something challenging together, you come out of it actually happier and feeling like a happy family.”
Of the tales of tumult told on the all-women panel, which was hosted during Women’s History Month, Blank’s was the most recent and intense. The luxury automaker’s identity overhaul, part of a larger shift to manufacturing only electric vehicles, was announced in November with a short teaser video that showed a diverse array of people in futuristic outfits as they gestured at smashing societal norms. The colorful marketing ploy was unusual for an automotive company, more stylistically aligned with avant-garde fashion than heritage performance vehicles. Notably, it did not feature a car.
Online response was swift and negative, stretching far beyond the usual consumer grumbling at official brand channels to include personal attacks against Blank, whose team was not directly involved in the creation of the content, as well as a U.K. employee. Such targeted harassment campaigns have become a familiar story within the industry following high-profile controversies that led to boycotts of brands like Bud Light and Target in recent years over perceived embraces of “wokeness,” or progressive causes.
“It was just outrageous how cruel and personal people were,” said Blank.
While the short-term chaos was rattling, Blank immediately received support from JLR leadership. The brand narrative also started to turn once Jaguar officially unveiled the Type 00 car model at an art festival in December. The “no such thing as bad publicity” adage may have been a bitter pill to swallow under the barrage of social media vitriol, but Jaguar was able to hold the spotlight and eventually shift perceptions in a more positive direction once the product came into clearer focus — all without spending a massive budget on a conventional rollout campaign.
“There was not a dollar spent in media in the U.S. It was just this one teaser video, one post on X from the U.K., that generated all of that attention,” said Blank. “Then we agreed globally to show the concept car in [Miami Art Week] in early December, and thankfully — and understandably, because it’s awesome — the press loved the car. We were able to turn all of that into, I think, good news.”
Pivoting with purpose
Blank has seen progress promoting the revamped Jaguar in a U.S. context. The sleek vehicle was on display at the NBA All-Star Weekend in February, where the automaker hosted its own tunnel walk, an occasion where basketball players show off their latest fashion.
“We were able to take that core insight of championing originality, creative originals, being avant-garde, being rebellious, being flashy, being hyper style-focused … we were able to tweak it to be a little more American-appropriate with the NBA,” said Blank.
Other marketing leaders at the talk, including executives from Panera Bread, Vuori and baby formula disruptor Bobbie, detailed navigating hiccups that threatened to provoke the ire of consumers.
Bobbie, for instance, contended with a notorious national supply shortage in 2022. At the time, the company was still working on a direct-to-consumer model and faced two choices: welcoming an influx of new customers eager for product to boost short-term growth or ensuring it could fulfill the orders of existing customers.
“We closed our store for seven months and we protected our inventory for subscribers,” said Kim Gebbia Chappell, chief brand officer at Bobbie.
The high-pressure decision, which was ultimately informed by the team being made up of parents, led to the creation of the Bobbie Peace of Mind promise. The pledge entails the company holding the amount of formula a baby needs until her first birthday for each subscriber.
“We do that because we don’t know if [a shortage is] going to happen again. There’s no more guardrails in place in our industry, sadly,” said Chappell. “It’s become sort of how we operate our business as a parent-first company.”
Other categories that have been roiled in recent years include fast-casual restaurants, which continue to grapple with price-conscious consumers and fast-changing technology needs. Panera last April implemented a significant menu overhaul that reduced the number of items available by about 30%, including some vegetarian-friendly options. Those types of tweaks frequently lead to consumer frustrations but also carry a direct impact on business.
Virtually overnight, Panera saw a sharp drop in traffic to digital channels, a problem for Chief Digital Officer Meenakshi Nagarajan. To adjust, the soup and sandwich purveyor tweaked its broader messaging strategy from being brand-first to prioritizing a “guest help mentality” as diners tried to navigate the new Panera, according to Nagarajan. Acknowledging that certain items were gone and guiding customers to other offerings became a leading mandate and carried other marketing lessons for Panera beyond the specific menu overhaul.
“I love that because it created that urgency to really pivot hard and start thinking about features, start thinking about the approach to customer journey and marketing more with a guest-first mentality,” said Nagarajan.
