Jaguar’s redesign was meant to position the automaker as an ultraluxury brand barrelling into the future. Instead, it has been criticized by anti-DEI crusaders who accused the brand of “going woke” and design pros who called it derivative.

Now, London-based phone and earbud maker Nothing has piled on by making a joke at the British car brand’s expense by revealing its own rebrand on X inspired by Jaguar’s. One post simply reads “Copy Jaguar,” playing off the “Copy Nothing” tagline that accompanied the car brand’s widely-panned video featuring people wearing futuristic clothing in alien, monochromatic settings.

Nothing also changed its X bio to its new tagline, as Jaguar did.

Nothing revealed its new logo in a separate X post.

Again mirroring Jaguar, Nothing’s logo uses a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. The brand also replaced its stippled lettering with rounded, solid lines.

The redesign is specific to Nothing’s X account, as it’s “the optimal platform to spark and grow conversation in real-time,” said Lauren Mahon, global senior social media manager at Nothing.

“This idea came to me during a morning meeting when I saw an opportunity to leverage a bubbling conversation on X to create a fun, reactive stunt,” she said in an email. “Within ten minutes, we created a new logo on Photoshop in a similar style font to that of Jaguar’s, updated our bio to “Copy Jaguar,” hit send on X and watched it snowball.”

Nothing’s post received more than 2 million impressions and thousands of shares in under eight hours, Mahon wrote in a LinkedIn post. The X stunt reached more than 10 million impressions as of Friday morning.

“We saw an opportunity to insert ourselves into the conversation about a legacy brand in an entirely different industry, and in doing so, we were able to increase our brand awareness while having a bit of fun in our distinctively cheeky tone of voice,” Mahon said.   

She declined to confirm how long the brand will stick with its “Copy Jaguar” branding.

‘First step in this exciting new era’

Jaguar’s rebrand has driven plenty of social media conversation this week, even leading to new attention for a weeks-old Volvo ad that some people have held up as an excellent example of auto marketing, contrasting it with Jaguar. Some commentators have given Jaguar kudos for its ability to attract attention in the face of a steady sales slump since 2018. Others mocking the ad, including Elon Musk, have noted that the “Copy Nothing” video contains no vehicles.

Jaguar, responding to the widespread criticism, shared a statement with Ad Age: “Our brand relaunch for Jaguar is a bold and imaginative reinvention and as expected it has attracted attention and debate. As proud custodians at such a remarkable point in Jaguar’s history we have preserved iconic symbols while taking a dramatic leap forward. The brand reveal is only the first step in this exciting new era and we look forward to sharing more on Jaguar's transformation in the coming days and weeks.”

The brand declined to answer questions about any agency involvement in the work.

Jaguar isn’t the only brand to have its redesign critiqued this year. In September, PayPal unveiled a new logo from design firm Pentagram that critics called flat, boring and too similar to redesigns from brands such as GoDaddy, Petco and Johnson & Johnson. Each was accused of stripping away what made it original to achieve corporate uniformity.

Nothing has garnered interest from tech trades and creators with its retro-futurist aesthetic. Its phones and earbuds are outfitted with customizable LED lights and see-through hardware that makes them look like gadgets from a science fiction show. It was one of the first smartphone companies to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its operating system in April.