The attention economy deals with human attention as a commodity. It is scarce, and millions of companies want it badly, which makes it valuable. There's a theory that defends it does not matter whether this attention is due to bad reasons. As long as you have buyers' attention, that's fine. Companies that believe this will say, "You may bad-mouth, but it has to be about me." Jaguar is allegedly taking the backlash against its rebranding efforts that way. Still, the profusion of mockery and memes show that the idea backfired. Instead of reviving the British brand, it may have killed it for good as the latest casualty in culture wars.
Curiously, it is attention economics that may help us explain how Jaguar ended up right here. My bet is that it has to do with social media. For some strange reason, Jaguar marketing executives must have believed that what is popular with them would help the brand sell cars. However, popularity winners on social media are either funny or controversial, two of the very things a carmaker should try to avoid as a label. The memes that have followed – some of which illustrate this article – prove that.
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