Jaguar vs Guinness: provenance vs universality

Jaguar’s latest campaign is playing up to the car manufacturer’s roots and heritage to great effect, whilst Guinness continues its journey away from its origins. So which strategy will stand out the strongest during the splurge of Super Bowl ads? asks Dominic Mills.

The British car industry is now regarded as one of the UK Plc’s great success stories, exporting vehicles all over Europe and, in some cases, the world.

It wasn’t that long ago, however, that it was regarded as a national basket case, and the mere hint that a car was made in the UK or contained British components was something to be ignored or glossed over.

Remember Rover? That was as British as British could be (even though it was owned by BMW), and it exemplified everything that was wrong about British-made cars.

Things have changed since then, but you still wouldn’t advertise a car as British, would you? After all, what with your Toyotas, Hondas, Fords and Nissans, none of them are actually British.

Even Jaguar falls into this category, with India’s Tata conglomerate owning parent company Jaguar Land Rover.

Except that Jaguar, at least, has British roots and heritage.

And boy, is it playing them up. A Super Bowl blockbuster breaks in two weeks’ time, and all the teasers indicate it is themed around those very same British roots.

I mention Jaguar, not just because it contains all the elements of a thoroughly modern big-budget campaign (Hollywood-quality superstars, big-name director, extra footage, teasers, microsite, Facebook pages, Twitter hashtags etc), but because it is based on provenance.

The dictionary defines provenance as place of origin, and for years rooting a product in a sense of place, or playing on its heritage, has been a powerful tool in the advertisers’ armoury.

The latest Guinness ad, however, is called ‘Les Sapeurs’ and is set in Brazzaville in the Congo (actually, I think it was filmed in South Africa, but we’ll gloss over that). It continues Guinness’s journey away from its roots – denying provenance, if you like.

I first thought of this some years after Guinness began to distance itself from Ireland, but at a time when Irish-themed bars were popping in every capital city and brewers were pumping out ‘craic’ beers (Kilkenny, Caffreys) as fast as they could dream them up.

“You’d think,” commented a creative contact of mine, as we watched Guinness’s Swimmer ad, “that this stuff was brewed on a sunny island somewhere in the Mediterranean.”

Now most beers still nod their heads in the direction of their place of origin, almost regardless of whether they are playing for an international market or a domestic one: Peroni, Carlsberg, Budweiser, Kronenbourg, Becks, Fosters, Newcastle Brown.

It’s partly, of course, because there isn’t much else to say. Or that they are so similar, provenance is the differentiator.

The same cannot be said of Guinness: it’s different, and there’s lots to say about the product itself. This, plus its global drinker base, probably means that its roots are less relevant than the universal themes you see played out in its ads: endurance, fortitude, companionship, identity, self-actualisation.

I love this Les Sapeurs ad, which celebrates a group of male dandies in Brazzaville known as the Society of Elegant Persons of the Congo.

You can also find out more about Les Sapeurs here in this short Guinness documentary.

The difficulty of seeking to appropriate a universal theme is, of course, that it is universal. How do you say it well? How do you say it differently?

I personally find there’s too much of this self-actualisation bollocks in this Guinness ad – “In life you cannot always choose what you do. But you can always choose you who are”, says a voiceover sounding suspiciously like Thierry Henry.

“With every brace and cufflink we say ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul'”.

Eeeurgh. Teeth-grating.

But I can’t deny the charm of the ad, nor the inspirational quality of Les Sapeurs themselves.

Jaguar, by contrast, takes a different route, celebrating its Britishness through the medium of Hollywood for the launch of the F-type. If that sounds contradictory, it’s not.

The Britishness is played out through Hollywood’s love of casting British actors as villains. Thus three well-known baddies (Ben Kinglsey, Tom Hiddleston and Mark Strong) all star in a blockbuster directed by another Brit, Tom Hooper of The King’s Speech fame.

Why? Well, the theme is it’s ‘good to be bad’; the idea being that, just as cinematic villains bring chaos and disruption, so challenger brand Jaguar will disrupt the norm in a luxury car market dominated by the Germans (in itself, you might say, another inversion of a cinematic norm).

It’s a very different idea and one that offers lots of latitude, even to sell quotidian product benefits like engine power and seating. Thus we see Ben Kingsley hamming it up as a Bond-type baddie, and Tom Hiddleston (below) offering us his stagey villainous chuckle.

I’ve no idea whether it will work, but judging by the reaction to all the ancillary activity here, where the landing page tells us ‘there’s a new British villain in town’, and on social media (#goodtobebad), the campaign is getting lots of attention. Consumers understand what’s going on, and are enjoying it.

If nothing else, Jaguar has an idea with plenty of mileage (no pun intended) and one which will stand out among the splurge of Superbowl ads – many of which, no doubt (I’m thinking Budweiser’s Clydesdale horses here) will also play the provenance card, i.e. as American as, well, obesity-inducing carbonated drinks.

I’m all for a bit more provenance in advertising. The trouble is that, in a world of globalisation and faceless multinational conglomerates, it’s a card fewer advertisers want to play, opting instead for universal themes they hope will strike a chord with their target audience.

Let’s hope Jaguar inspires a few more advertisers to reconnect with their roots.