Selling Modern Luxury

Over the last few years, one company in particular has been upping its cool to crack our demographic of hip urban professionals.  That company is Jaguar Cars.  In this interview, Amanda Chick, the head of Jaguar’s global marketing experience, explains how Jaguar has redefined itself as a luxury brand.  In addition to shifting its marketing efforts, Jaguar has also added a little more sex appeal to its cars.  Check out the newly revealed 420 horsepower Jaguar C-XF, the world’s first sexy sedan.

10 Questions with Amanda Chick:

1.  How did you get involved in marketing for Jaguar?

I’ve been with Jaguar for 21 years, so I’ve been with this remarkable organization through thick and thin.  Initially, I was based in the UK, but then I too over global responsibility.  Now my role is Global Experiential Marketing Manager, so I look after anything related to the experience of our brand

2. I’m particularly interested in Jaguar’s shift towards a younger demographic, which we’ve seen especially with the XK marketing.

You can see the shift with the XK, but its actually our new positioning.  Jaguar is now a fashion luxury brand.  This is important.  We are a luxury brand, not just a luxury car brand.  So what we’re saying is that we want to put ourselves against the likes of Gucci, Armani, Prada.  We are a luxury brand just in the same way as those brands are luxury brands.  And that’s why you’ll see that our marketing and our advertising in particular is very much a part of a lifestyle.  You don’t just see one big picture of a car.  It’s the car within that luxury lifestyle so that our customers can relate to that. 

3. So, cultural branding at its best?

Absolutely right. 

4. What are some more examples of how you are integrating your brand into this culture? 

We are involved in all sorts of areas where we are talking directly to those types of customers or those types of people that can influence our brand.  I can give you an example.  We are the sponsor of the Wallpaper Magazine Design Award which are actually going to be announced this week in London.  We’re sponsoring that because Wallpaper and us will work very well together.  They are the best in design, and they recognize the importance of design.  So it’s that sort of thing, we’re affiliating ourselves with design icons and the luxury design community. 

5. How important is trend spotting in your world? 

Very important because we want to “be there” before anybody else.  And I think when it comes to luxury brands it’s important that you understand where luxury is going.  But we are not interested in the sort of trends that are here today gone tomorrow.  It has to be very credible.  We want to be at the leading edge particularly in design, but not in a flashy sort of instantaneous way because we are a very credible brand. 

6. How do you facilitate trend spotting in your organization?

We have a global agency that we work with who specifically look after our cars in the context of luxury brand.  So they are constantly looking at how other luxury brands are operating.  We keep an eye on the car manufacturers of course, but our interest is absolutely in the fashion brand, the design community, architecture and that kind of thing.

7. How do you define the trend?

That’s a very interesting question actually.  I think for us it’s very much where design is leading.  We are design led and I think what we look to do is to identify where credible designers are going and the shifts in design. 

8. And how do you define cool?

Jaguar Cars!

9. Nice, good answer.  Okay, personally, how do you reset yourself when you want to be creative?  Do you have any rituals that you do? 

One of the things that I do and I think that is very important is that I always think about our brand and what we do from the customer’s perspective.  At the end of the day we produce beautiful cars for our customers.  However, people don’t buy cars like Jaguars to get from A to B.  They buy them to get from A to B in a certain style and everything must reflect that.  To accomplish that, we have to put ourselves into the customers’ position. 

10. Where would you like to see yourself in 10 years?

Honestly? I’d quite like to be running the company!