Gerry McGovern, the longtime creative chief who played a central role in Jaguar’s transformation, has officially left Jaguar Land Rover. Reports first emerged in December 2025 claiming he had been removed and escorted from the company after more than two decades with JLR. The company initially denied that his employment had been terminated. Months later, JLR formally confirmed that McGovern would leave at the end of March 2026 to establish his own creative consultancy.
His departure came shortly after PB Balaji took over as JLR’s chief executive.
McGovern had enormous influence over the company’s design direction. During his career at JLR, he helped shape vehicles including the Range Rover Evoque, Range Rover Velar and the modern Defender. He also became one of the leading figures behind Jaguar’s dramatic reinvention.
That reinvention became one of the most controversial marketing moves in the automotive industry.
The campaign featured models wearing colorful, futuristic clothing against a highly stylized backdrop. Instead of putting a sleek Jaguar front and center, the advertisement presented viewers with slogans including “Create Exuberant,” “Delete Ordinary,” and “Copy Nothing.”
The strategy was intended to redefine Jaguar for a new era. Instead, it triggered a massive online backlash.
Jaguar executives defended the campaign at the time. Managing director Rawdon Glover said:
“Social media is a very binary place,” Glover said. “It’s love and hate, it’s black and white.”
The sales figures that followed gave critics plenty of ammunition.
In April 2025, Jaguar recorded only 49 vehicle registrations across Europe, compared with 1,961 during the same month a year earlier. That represented a 97.5 percent decline. January-through-April registrations were also down sharply.
There were other factors at work, however.
Jaguar was simultaneously transitioning toward an all-electric luxury strategy, leaving customers with a reduced lineup while the company prepared future models. JLR has also faced intense competition from Chinese automakers and suffered a major cyberattack that disrupted production. Those issues make it difficult to attribute the sales collapse to the advertising campaign alone.
Still, the rebrand became the symbol of Jaguar’s troubles.
President Donald Trump weighed in on the controversy in August 2025, writing on Truth Social:
“Jaguar did a stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement, THAT IS A TOTAL DISASTER!”
Trump also compared the situation with the backlash surrounding Bud Light and questioned whether consumers would still want to purchase Jaguars after seeing the campaign.
Now comes the latest blow.
JLR announced plans to eliminate approximately 4,000 positions over the next two years. The cuts represent nearly 10 percent of the company’s global workforce and are part of a broader turnaround program targeting £1.7 billion in savings. JLR is also trying to lower the number of vehicles it needs to sell each year to break even to roughly 300,000.
The company has attributed the restructuring to intense competition, technological changes, tariffs, geopolitical uncertainty and the difficult conditions facing the automotive industry.
About 34,000 of JLR’s roughly 43,000 employees are based in Britain, meaning the consequences are expected to be felt heavily across the company’s home country.
That is a dramatically different story from a flashy advertising campaign.
Thousands of employees now face an uncertain future while Jaguar attempts to rebuild its business around electric vehicles and a new luxury-market strategy.
And the company’s leadership has changed substantially during the same period.
Former CEO Adrian Mardell retired in 2025. McGovern subsequently departed. Outside advertising firm Accenture Song, which was involved in the controversial campaign, has also faced scrutiny over its role in the rebrand.
McGovern, meanwhile, has continued to defend the thinking behind the campaign. In an August 2026 interview, he argued that the controversial video had been taken out of context and explained the meaning behind “Copy Nothing.”
Whether Jaguar’s radical strategy ultimately works remains to be seen.
The company says it is investing heavily in electrification, digital technology and manufacturing while preparing several new models. But the immediate reality is much less glamorous: fewer workers, aggressive cost cutting and a brand trying to reconnect with consumers after one of the most dramatic identity changes in its history.
The leaping cat may have disappeared from Jaguar’s primary branding, but the controversy surrounding its removal has proven much harder to erase.
And with 4,000 jobs now on the chopping block, Jaguar’s rebrand is no longer merely a debate about logos, slogans or advertising.
It has become part of a much larger question facing the company: Can Jaguar reinvent itself without losing the customers who made the brand famous in the first place?
