This was one of the few times I’ve been told to just think up something crazy and don’t worry about the budget!

The problem at hand was the reputation Jaguar had gotten as a car for old men with money. In the case of the X-TYPE, the entry level Jaguar, this stereotype was causing loads of trouble. Its competitors were the BMW 3 Series, the Mercedes C-Class, and Lexus…none of which were seen as geriatric. So this campaign was created in our attempt to appeal to a younger market.

Watch the Films

In the thought process, I went back to the essence of the Jaguar… what was it that made this brand special? It seemed to be that it all seemed to be based on the feeling you get when you are in one, even just sitting in one, you start to notice that it’s not quite like the other cars… This led to the idea that when you come into contact with the car, it transforms you, brings out a side of you normally kept hidden, an animalistic instinct almost. The initial story I created to sell the concept was a bit darker and intense than the final legal approved stories.

In the original pilot story, A business woman is getting off work, goes to her car in a dimly lit parking lot, but hesitates as she sees a man in a dark coat a couple spots over standing by his X-TYPE.  She normally wouldn’t approach a stranger in a parking structure, but a strange feeling is coming over her. She removes her overcoat as she approaches, eyeing the man, and runs her hand along the side of the car keeping her gaze on him, then she grabs him by the tie, kisses him passionately. While he’s totally taken by surprise, and thinking it’s his lucky day, she pickpockets his car keys, throws him to the ground and drives off with the car. Then you see her shake her hair out, adjust her lipstick, and toss her fake pearls out the window as she heads down the road. So you can see that elements of this did make it into the final stories… but we refrained from any violence or actual “stealing” of the vehicles. The final stories were written in a way so that in the end you see that each character only borrowed the car. The Legal Department wouldn’t let us do things like let the little boy actually drive… so, we made his adventure into a theme park ride.

This was launched shortly after the “Animatrix” a series of animated shorts that came after the Matrix movie done by a variety of illustrators and were wildly popular with our target audience.. so, in order to not only appeal to them, but to make it possible to carry out the more fantastical stories with the car… when the person transforms after coming in contact with it, animation takes over. We were able to get Peter Chung on the project, one of the animators from the Animatrix who had quite a following.

The site had a great response, we released the stories sequentially, gathering handraisers along the way.