Jaguar launches new 'British intelligence' ads

Jaguar's British villains are getting smarter.

To follow up from its "It's good to be bad" television ads that extolled filmland's British bad guys, Jaguar is following up with a new campaign aimed at pointing up the engineering quality behind the name.

Instead of "British villains" — which featured some famous baddies like Ben Kingsley — the new campaign making its debut Monday is themed "British intelligence." In it, a character who seems a bit like "Q," the crafty, nerdy outfitter to James Bond, goes through aspects of Jaguar luxury cars' innards.

The intro ad is here, three of the outfitter's rigorous tests of Jaguar technology are above and below.

"People were asking, 'What happens next?' " says Matt Page, creative director for Jaguar's agency, Spark44. "Jaguars have this very particular attitude toward technology. ... We wanted to bring that to life."

The British villains campaign promoted the Jaguar F-Type sports car, an attempt to try to get well-heeled prospects to think of the brand for serious performance. Now the focus in the batch of ads is to show people that Jaguar has seriously improved quality.

"There is a lingering perception that our initial quality is not as good as it is," says Joe Torpey, head of advertising for Jaguar. In trying to share that message, he says Jag wants to make an impression with potential buyers. "This is a storytelling way of trying to get our foot in the door."

Jaguar was second only to Porsche in the annual J.D. Power and Associates survey this year, which measures the number of defects and other problems reported by buyers in new cars. It's a huge improvement over past years, but lots of potential buyers may not know about it.

"Perception lags reality," says Kim McCullough, brand vice president for Jaguar Land Rover.

Unlike the last campaign that focused on a single model, the new one will showcase Jaguar's full lineup. It will include both TV and Web installments. But each will feature British actor Nicholas Hoult, who describes his character as a "tech whiz."