XJ TeamOrigin

Jaguar MD Geoff Cousins on why they are backing Sir Keith Mills' team

There seems to be a great deal of sponsorship interest in our sport at present from luxury car manufacturers.

Already we have BMW who have sponsored Larry Ellison’s team for the last three America’s Cups, Volvo with events ranging from the fully crewed round the world race to the ISAF Youth Worlds, to Alfa Romeo who for many years backed Neville Crichton’s supermaxi campaign, and Audi who’s involvement in our sport spans the world, from the Audi MedCup, to the various Melges one design circuits, the Audi Sardinia Cup, to Hamilton Island Race Week in Australia and even America where Melges events in the past have been supported by Audi dealerships.

The latest to join the party is Jaguar on Wednesday was announced as the backer for TeamOrigin during the 1851 Cup. The renowned British manufacturer is in fact Indian owned, having been sold by Ford in the spring of 2008 to Tata Motors, along with Land Rover.

This is the first time Jaguar has had anything to do with sailing and the duration of their commitment is next week’s 1851 Cup in Cowes and a rather vague ‘for the rest of the summer’.

According to Jaguar’s MD Geoff Cousins, “It is for 1851 and Cowes and then whatever the guys come up with. It is a case of dipping our toe in the water and see how we get on. That is honestly it. We have not done anything with the sailing community before. I think we are going to do this, then take a step back, reflect and see how we get on.”

Sir Keith Mills is understandably pleased to have some support for his campaign at this early stage in the AC cycle. “It is a step in the right direction. This was more opportunistic than anything else, because in reality we aren’t going to be in a position to sign long term contracts until the end of the year because we don’t have a venue, we don’t have a class of boat and we don’t have a Protocol. But our discussions with Jaguar went really well and they said ‘how can we get involved sooner?’ And we said ‘we are doing some stuff this summer, join us, you’ll get a taste for the team. We’ll see if we can work together and that can easily then fold into a long term contract. I think it is a great bit of news.”

According to Cousins over the last three years (so since before their acquisition by Tata) Jaguar has been undergoing a transformation in terms of both its product line and as a brand. Their cars, he says, are based on design and performance underpinned by the latest technology, while the brand is also now attempting to appeal to a new audience.

In sponsorship terms they are hoping to achieve this through sport. Already they back the England Cricket Team, are into football through the League Managers Association while local to their headquarters in Warwickshire, they are involved with Warwickshire County Cricket Club, Coventry City football club and the Leicester Tigers rugby team.

“I firmly believe that an association with the best of British sport will bring a younger, cooler, edged, sexier element to the brand and it will get us to different customer groups than we have dealt with before, because at the end of the day, I do have to sell cars,” says Cousins.

But their most recent venture, founded nine months ago, is the Jaguar Academy of Sport. The aim of this is ‘to celebrate, recognise and inspire the very best in British sporting talent’, but it particularly seeks to identify new talent and provide funding to help nurture it.
They achieve this through having a number of patrons such David Beckham, Ian Botham, Gareth Edwards, Kelly Holmes, Denise Lewis and Steve Redgrave and a roster of ambassadors from Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy, England captain Stephen Gerard, racing driver Martin Brundle, golfer Lee Westwood to rugby player Shane Williams. “And we take that to grass roots levels though our dealers, so that they get involved with the local county cricket team and the premiership rugby team and the sporting celebrities we have got and it all helps to sell more cars,” says Geoff Cousins. “It is all about the best of British sport and British sporting endeavours. So Jaguar and England cricket makes a lot of sense. Jaguar with Sir Keith Mills - that makes a lot of sense.”

Recently the Jaguar Academy for Sport has given out its first round of bursaries to 35 up-and-coming talents in the 14-24 age range, nominated by the Sports Aid Foundation. Typically they received £2,000 each. “As a young female wrestler said ‘I can now insure my car and go training four times a week, not one’. That is what it is for. It is not for the stars who already get lottery funding,” says Cousins.

The deal with TeamOrigin also comes under the Jaguar Academy of Sport umbrella. “In marketing speak the brand pillars for Jaguar are design, luxury and performance. If you talk to the guys our partnership with TeamOrigin is a no-brainer for this event, because they have the same attributes, the same values as Jaguar does,” says Cousins.

There is of course the British angle, but also the performance, technology but also the green aspect which fits nicely with TeamOrigin’s association with the Carbon Trust. As Cousins explains: “We are well aware we have to be beautiful fast green cars – and we are doing a lot of work on that at the moment because the alignment with TeamOrigin and the Carbon Trust really does make sense, because we have aggressive targets we have to meet. The new XJ 3 litre diesel was given an award at the What Car! Green Awards for the greenest luxury car on the road today. We can’t stop there.We are at the leading edge of product development in the UK in terms of electricification, hybrid, aluminium construction and advanced design and we hope that we will in a few years be significantly better than we are now. Add all that together, the design, performance, luxury sustainability: I think this partnership is a real natural fit and it makes a lot of sense.”

So at the 1851 Cup, the British team with Jaguar will be up against an American team backed by BMW. “I look forward to the competition a bit. The Jaguar-BMW angle gives is another bit of an edge. We see each other all the time,” says Cousins.

The sponsorship is not for brand awareness, but primarily for corporate entertainment. In Cowes, Jaguar will be entertaining dealers from across the south of the UK. “For me it is not worth me paying money just to have the Jaguar leaper anywhere, because people know that,” says Cousins, adding that they tried putting their ‘pouncing cat’ logo down the side of the boat, only that it looked like it was being drowned... “It is about getting people to events that are exciting with some of the celebrities we have to make it an experience. Then it works for me. From what I have heard, Cowes week is one hell of an experience. For me it makes a lot of sense.”

Cousins hasn’t been sailing before and says that his main trepidation is that he gets motion sickness. So perhaps the Round the Island Race next Thursday won’t be for him.