Copy Nothing, Sell Nothing, Fire Nobody: The Jaguar Masterclass in Corporate Impunity

Well, well, well. It finally happened.

Gerry McGovern, the “Chief Creative Officer” behind Jaguar’s catastrophic rebrand, has reportedly been fired. “Escorted out of the office,” according to multiple sources. Of course, Jaguar later denied it, because why would a company that launched a car campaign without showing a car be transparent about anything?

But let’s assume, for the sake of my sanity, that the initial reports are true. Let’s assume that someone, somewhere in the JLR hierarchy, finally looked at the smoking crater where Jaguar’s brand identity used to be and said: “Maybe we should do something about this.”

It took them over a year.

Over a year since the “Copy Nothing” campaign made the company a global laughingstock. Over a year since Elon Musk, of all people, mocked them on X with “Do you sell cars?”. Over a year of watching a heritage brand with 90 years of history burn itself to the ground in the name of “Exuberant Modernism.”

And this man kept his job. For over a year.

Let’s Recap the Disaster

For those who mercifully missed it, here’s what Jaguar did:

1. They launched a rebrand campaign called “Copy Nothing” that featured models in colorful outfits walking through a pink desert. There was not a single car in the advertisement. Not one. A car company. No cars.

2. They removed the iconic leaping jaguar from their logo. You know, the thing that made it recognizable. Gone.

3. They unveiled a concept car, the Type 00, that was compared to “Barbie’s dream car,” “a German pillbox,” and “something that looks like it was generated by Grok.”

4. They stopped production of almost all their combustion vehicles before having any electric vehicles ready to sell. The XE, XF, F-Type, E-Pace, I-Pace, all gone. Eliminated. They kept only the F-Pace limping along while they prepare for… what, exactly? Their first new EV has now been delayed to 2026.

Let me repeat that for the people in the back: Jaguar voluntarily stopped selling cars before having new cars to sell. They created a gap in their lineup where they have essentially nothing. They are a car company that currently barely sells cars.

This is not a rebrand. This is corporate suicide performed in slow motion while the executives applaud themselves for being “bold.”

The Competence Paradox

Here’s what makes my blood boil.

I have seen brilliant developers, people who can architect distributed systems in their sleep, who write documentation that makes you weep with joy, who mentor junior engineers with the patience of saints, get laid off because of “cultural fit” or “restructuring” or whatever euphemism HR cooked up that quarter.

Over 180,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2025 alone. People who actually produce things. People who actually contribute. People who can point to measurable outcomes and say: “I built that. It works. It makes money.”

Meanwhile, Gerry McGovern spent 21 years at JLR. Twenty-one years. And in his final act, he orchestrated a campaign so tone-deaf, so disconnected from reality, so fundamentally stupid that it became a case study in what not to do. He created a rebrand where:

• The marketing director celebrated their “fearless” commitment to DEI while forgetting to include the product they’re selling.
• The CEO defended the campaign as “bold and imaginative” while sales collapsed.
• The company outsourced parts of the rebrand to Accenture consultants, because nothing says “authentic brand identity” like paying a consulting firm to tell you who you are.

And this guy kept drawing a salary. For months. While the internet roasted them daily. While their customer base evaporated. While the brand hemorrhaged whatever goodwill it had left.

The Two-Tiered Reality

There are two worlds in corporate life:

World One: You are a developer, an engineer, a designer, an analyst. You make one mistake, a bug in production, a missed deadline, a misread email, and suddenly you’re in a “performance improvement plan.” Two quarters later, you’re out. Your LinkedIn says “Open to Work” and you’re competing with 100 other people for the same mid-level position.

World Two: You are a C-suite executive. You orchestrate a rebrand that alienates your entire customer base. You greenlight a campaign that becomes a viral joke. You stop selling your products before the replacements are ready. You oversee the destruction of brand equity built over decades. And what happens? You collect your salary for another year, maybe get a comfortable “retirement,” and probably land a consulting gig advising other companies on “brand transformation.”

The developer who accidentally pushed to production on a Friday gets fired faster than the executive who burned a 90-year-old brand to ash on purpose.

The Insult to Injury

You want to know the worst part?

The first model from Jaguar’s new electric lineup has been delayed. Originally supposed to be revealed in 2025, now pushed to 2026. Customer deliveries? “Shortly after the reveal,” they say. Which, in corporate speak, means “we have no idea.”

So let’s tally the score:

• Combustion cars: Gone.
• Electric cars: Delayed.
• Brand identity: Mocked globally.
• Customer trust: Obliterated.
• Sales: Cratered.
• Executive responsible: Allegedly fired after 13+ months of this trainwreck.

Meanwhile, somewhere out there, a senior engineer with 10 years of experience is being told their position has been “eliminated due to macroeconomic conditions” because the company needs to “optimize for efficiency.”

The engineer shipped code that worked. McGovern shipped a campaign without a car.

Guess which one had a longer runway before consequences arrived?

The Lesson

There is no lesson. That’s the point.

Corporate accountability is a myth sold to workers to keep them compliant. The rules that apply to you, deliver results, meet deadlines, don’t embarrass the company, do not apply to the people who make the biggest decisions.

You can destroy a company from the top and walk away with a golden parachute. You can alienate every customer and still attend the board meetings. You can be wrong in the most public, most expensive, most catastrophic way possible, and the only consequence is that someone might write a case study about you in business school.

But god forbid you miss a sprint deadline or fail to smile enough in the team retrospective.

Copy Nothing, indeed. Because apparently, nobody at Jaguar copied the basic principle of “sell products to customers” or “don’t fire the people who actually work while protecting the people who don’t.”

I’m going to tell the other devs I know to look at this job posting. Apparently, 180,000 tech workers have already been laid off this year, so there’s plenty of talent available. After all, none of them have ever destroyed a 90-year-old brand. That probably makes them overqualified.