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Complementary mixed messages and the effectiveness – and otherwise – of making your brand look like something it isn’t.
There are some who say it’s considered bad form, in street-fighting circles, to kick a man when he’s down. I don’t know how true that is, but some of the things I’ve seen on the streets of our towns and cities on a Saturday night might suggest otherwise.
But either way, I wouldn’t want to give luxury car brand Jaguar any more of a kicking for its ‘interesting’ rebrand. Not when it’s already done such a thorough job of self-harm all on its own. Except to note one thing: among all the weird clothes and the novelty haircuts and the exhortations to ‘create exuberant,’ ‘delete ordinary’ and ‘copy nothing,’ if I’d actually come down from Mars, or wherever it was that the rebrand launch film was filmed, I’d struggle to work out what it is that Jaguar are actually selling nowadays.
It’s telling that one of the first things Tesla guy Elon Musk asked Jaguar was, Do you sell cars? (1)
The closest we get to any kind of answer to that is right at the end of the film when a group of models all sit down on, and then get up from, a slab of rock that might be vaguely suggestive of a car. Then again, it might not. Perhaps the brand is planning to make Flintstones cars or something.
But that’s enough of cars, at least for now. What I want to talk about, for now, is surprising branding in general. In particular, I want to talk about the kind of surprising branding that, if it copies anything at all, copies stuff that seems completely random and totally unexpected.
Like Moschino’s Fresh Couture eau de toilette, which comes in a window-cleaner spray bottle. (2) Or like Engine, the Italian artisan gin that comes in an oil-can. (3). Then there are the German condoms in crisp bags. (4)
Added to this, you can now also get sunscreen in whipped cream spraycans (5), coffee in toothpaste tubes (6)and VHS video boxes (7) , and gravy in beer cans (8).
Much of the time it’s employed by new brands seeking to break through in crowded and competitive markets by going viral on social media. But that’s not always the case. At just over forty years old, Moschino may be a relative newcomer compared with the Diors and Chanels of this world, but it’s not exactly a startup.
It has a name, this phenomenon. Michael Miraflor, an American marketing and venture capital consultant, has dubbed it ‘Chaos Packaging’. Speaking to The Times (9) , he describes it as ‘the trend where products are packaged in unexpected, sometimes confusing and sometimes delightful ways’.
But for me, the term chaos doesn’t really do it justice. Chaos implies randomness. Like you’ve got a product to launch so you just spin the wheel of chance and settle for whatever it lands on. Maybe that’s so in some cases. Maybe sheer weirdness gets noticed on social media, for a while. Maybe it gets likes and shares, for a while. But after that?
In general, when things are branded in the style of things they’re not, it only really works, and – importantly – only really keeps on working beyond the initial surprise, when there’s some sort of benefit to the user. Which may be indirect and emotional rather than physical, but a benefit nevertheless.
Consider why, for example, someone might want to pay £1,350 for a pair of ill-fitting, heavily stained and badly ripped baggy jeans from Balenciaga (10) when they could get a brand-new pair of wide-leg from M&S for £35 (11), with no rips.
Not that ripping and distressed is anything new. Or indeed scruffy workwear as status clothing. Back in the 14th century there was a padded undergarment called the pourpoint, which was worn under armour. With heavy use it got ripped and frayed. It might even get slashed by weapons, if the wearer was unlucky. Over the next century or so the pourpoint evolved into the fashion jacket known as the doublet, which was often deliberately slashed to show vibrant silk and satin linings. But it wasn’t just random chance that wealthy urbanites came to adopt the soldier’s worn-out working dress in high-status environments. It said something about the user. Several somethings, in fact. On one level it said, I’m rich and I’m fashionable enough to be able to wear velvet and high-status fabrics. But underneath that there were the semiotic echoes that said, this is a knight’s garment. Because I’m also virile and physical.
And when you look at the most interesting pairings in what’s come to be known as chaos packaging, you often get the same principle of mixed messages applying.
Engine gin looks not just like an oilcan, but like a retro classic oilcan. It carries echoes of retro classic cars. Old Jaguars with chrome bumpers and wire wheels, for example. And that’s pretty damn appealing to many of the kinds of people who drink artisan gin. The brand is communicating mixed messages, but complementary ones.
The crisp-bag condoms bring a level of fun, pleasure and indulgence to what can seem to some a passion-killing product.
Even the window-cleaner perfume spray says something about the kind of person you are, or that you aspire to be, by highlighting contrast between the use Moschino people have for bottles like that (making themselves desirable), compared with the use other people have for them (domestic drudgery).
To come back to cars, on Mars, and Jaguars, it remains to be seen what Jaguar customers will make of the rebrand with all the weird clothes, the lack of product imagery, and the replacement of a much-loved brand icon. Maybe it will work for them. Who knows. Shocking, unexpected branding, or rebranding, is not in and of itself always or necessarily a bad thing. It gets talked about, for one thing. And its car ad with no cars in is certainly attention-grabbing. There is some very strange, mixed messaging going on here. The real test of effectiveness for Jaguar, and for every other brand that takes the chaos branding route, will be whether those mixed messages are complementary and add value to the customer on some level, or whether they’re just weird for weird’s sake.
[1]https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1858914024013910020
[3]https://www.engine.land/en/shop/product/gintanica_sku
[4) https://purpose-economy.org/en/companies/einhorn/
[5]https://www.vacation.inc/products/classic-whip-spf-30
[7] https://process.coffee/?srsltid=AfmBOorpiJk2lM9T0LyZByQEJ0O0sjXFyTV8YwrHa3thwfD15rztdcm5
[8]https://www.pottspartnership.co.uk/collections/gravy-cans