Jaguar Land Rover’s Charlotte Blank on Luxury, Purpose & Experiential Storytelling

Up today on the Speed of Culture podcast, we are thrilled to be joined by Charlotte Blank, the Chief Marketing Officer at Jaguar Land Rover North America. From activating a house of brands to launching purpose-driven platforms like the Defender Service Awards, Charlotte is redefining what it means to connect with today's values-driven consumer while moving at the speed of culture. Charlotte, so great to see you today. Great to see you.

Thanks for hosting, Matt.

Absolutely. So, you know, the auto industry is at quite a crossroads right now, and arguably it's been at a crossroads for the last several decades. You know, it's just always such a category that sits at the crossroads of so many different cultural movements and that the consumer, obviously, you have things like interest rates and urbanization, all sorts of things impact the industry. What do you think are the biggest drivers of change in the automotive industry today in 2025?

Oh my gosh, never a dull moment. We are as guilty as any other marketer of overusing the word transformation, but I would agree that that applies to, you know, the ever-changing economic regulatory landscape to electrification and different choices consumers have to make about powertrain. One that's really interesting from a marketer and consumer behavior standpoint is the shopping experience. And what consumers, particularly luxury consumers, have come to expect in an omnichannel shopping experience and the ability to start, stop, or continue your journey from your phone, from your computer, from in-person in the dealership. So we're really focused heavily on that this year, trying to create a more seamless experience both with technology and in partnership with our retailers. But you name it, I mean, there's just nothing constant.

So how important is the physical dealer experience in the buyer journey? Because obviously, so many categories— like, pre-COVID, people never would have thought groceries would have taken off the way it has online. Obviously, buying or leasing a car is a much more substantive purchase than a bag of groceries. But that being said, with today's advancements in virtual reality and mixed reality, you can really experience a vehicle in a lot of ways without even being there. Is there a shift going on, or do you see the dealership always as kind of a core pillar to the buying journey?

Both. I think the dealership always plays a crucial role, not only in the shopping experience, but especially in the after-ownership experience. Going in for service is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, in terms of hospitality and being treated like you're part of a luxury community, in our case. So we really do value and emphasize that relationship with our retailers and are working to build that sense, that cultural movement of hospitality and behaving as a, say, luxury hotel chain might, as opposed to a traditional, you know, car dealership, so to speak, which many of our retailers naturally do. That said, behavior is shifting every day and more and more of it is going online as that becomes more and more convenient. And particularly when we see strong loyalty as our brands, you know, have enjoyed and people have come to know and love their Range Rover, their Defender, they know that they want another, it might be easier to make that decision from home and just to sort of go ahead and order another as opposed to when you're new to a brand. But when you're exploring the brand, when you want to come in and experience it for the first time, there's really no substitute for a proper test drive and a proper explanation of the technology. Really kind of having your hand held a bit, I think, is appropriate for such a significant investment.

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned the word cultural, cultural several times in this interview already. And when you obviously think about the youth market and that next generation buyer, you know, their needs have changed. Luxury used to mean craft and it used to mean, you know, sophistication. And obviously in a lot of ways it still does, but obviously having a brand that is relevant to culture matters so much. You know, rolling up in a Range Rover is very culturally relevant today, arguably more so than other luxury brands in the automotive space. So what do you as CMO do every morning when you come into the office and you think about, I'm going to drive my brands forward relative to their place in culture? Like, what does that look like in terms of your approach?

Gosh, there's so many ways to think about that and to answer that question. I mean, you know, since you chose Range Rover, there is just something really fantastic about that feeling of driving around in a Range Rover.

And that's a—

that's an interesting brand to start with in that it's it's— has enjoyed success kind of in its own right for some time. And we haven't historically put a tremendous push behind that brand. It's kind of like if you know, you know, and if you're in certain circles, it does well. But we want to grow the brand. We want to continue scaling it and capturing on this momentum. The US, you know, became the biggest market of the global brand last year, and we want to continue that success. So there's this careful balance of growth and scale, but maintaining that sense of scarcity and exclusivity that makes it so special. That's a special challenge for luxury brands and one that we consider in every decision, be it the transactional and how we communicate pricing, or in the much more upper funnel communication and what is the most appropriate way to convey luxury and invoke a sense of willingness to pay, etc., in a way that stands out from our competitors and feels uniquely Range Rover.

Yeah, I mean, you mentioned pricing. What we have seen some luxury brands do, not just in automotive, but whether it be in fashion or apparel, is they've either created a second kind of entry-level brand or entry-level models to let younger consumers get in so they don't disenfranchise the youth generation. Because then it obviously allows other brands to kind of capture those brand lifelong brand loyalties. And by the time they can afford your car, they're already stuck on another brand. How do you look at that dynamic in terms of creating entry points for consumers at younger ages?

So we do have within the Range Rover brand, you could start with a Range Rover Evoque, which is a popular smaller-size crossover. Then that sort of ladders up through the Velar, the Range Rover Sport, and the Range Rover. But that's actually a really interesting question of its own is Range Rover Sport in one way is a model of the Range Rover brand, but in some ways behaves like a brand of its own. And we've seen— some really interesting, not so much demographic differences like the age that you referenced, but more psychological and how people see themselves and sort of the emphasizing the dynamic sort of roguishness, playfulness of that brand that's in some ways sort of distinct from Range Rover. So that adds a little bit of complexity where sometimes we treat it as a model and sometimes we treat it as a brand of its own.

Yeah. And what are— some of the things that, I guess, consumers, regardless of, I guess, their age or where they're entering with your various models, are, I guess, clamoring towards relative to, like, the offerings of the vehicles? Like, what matters more today than maybe didn't a decade ago?

We see this shift toward experiences, community. You know, the car is so much more than a car. It's what it says about you and the company you keep. So that I think our marketing has kind of evolved to keep up with that and an increasing emphasis on experiential marketing. Our platform now globally around Range Rover House, which is creating a really curated experiential element of a way to experience the brand, and we'll activate at events like around Monterey Car Week in Pebble Beach or Salt Lake City and a popular ski destination at— in Park City. Where we're creating sort of a, a cultural moment and curating an experience that helps us think about if Range Rover were literally a house, what would it look like, feel like, smell like? What would you eat there? Who would you invite? What would you wear? And it sort of brings the brand to life in a certain way that makes people feel like they're part of a special club or tribe, and that it sort of extends the experience beyond the product itself.

So another iconic brand that you oversee is Jaguar. And I know Jaguar is in the midst of a big brand relaunch. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that brand, which obviously isn't as culturally at the center as a brand like Range Rover, but obviously has a lot of legacy, a lot of history, a lot of drivers absolutely love it. Just love to hear your thoughts on where you're taking that brand.

I think you just spoke to a little bit of the answer in your question, which was that Jaguar— The Jaguar E-Pace is coming out. Yeah. I mean, for some time, Jaguar has not been you know, in the cultural conversation to the extent that it should be, you know, given its historical significance and just the incredible performance and passion around that brand for those in the know. And it's been through so many iterations and different sort of eras and phases and different strategies for that brand over decades. And this year is us embarking on a really bold complete transformation of the brand, the product, the shopping experience. Really, the whole promise around the Jaguar brand is going to be fresh and new going forward over the next couple of years. And in a way that's very true to the original essence of the brand, the, the campaign or the sort of ethos and mantra that we've been communicating around copy nothing borrows from an original quote from the original designer of the brand. It's really been at the core as being unique, original, and truly a copy of nothing. And so the new product and strategy will reflect that. And if we learned anything from this past year, it's that we definitely, you know, could have drummed up some interest in what's coming next, you know, could not have anticipated the reaction, the level of attention that we received, but it really, you know, turned into a tremendous amount of eyeballs and engagement and interaction with the concept vehicle that we revealed at Art Miami in early December. And overwhelmingly, the concept vehicle was well received by the press and really sort of turned the conversation toward, hmm, this is going to be really exciting. This is a new way to do— to present an electric vehicle and a potential electric lineup.

Yeah, you launch an electric car or new, I mean, versus a traditional auto show or something like that.

True. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you really have to redefine so much in, you know, obviously driving relevance in the auto space. I know purpose is another area that you've done a lot of work in, specifically the Defender Service Awards. Would love to talk about why that's important as a core pillar to some of the work you're doing on that brand. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, Defender is historically a purpose-driven brand, really, for over 70 years. It's had a relationship with the Red Cross globally, going on now 20 years with Tusk, a global conservation organization focused on African wildlife. And here in the United States, we have our own grassroots version of a cause marketing platform going on 5 years with Defender Service Awards. And it's all meant to bring to life this lifestyle pillar around the Defender brand being purposeful, which, you know, can be defined multiple ways, but it's to contrast with other vehicles that are highly off-road capable, rugged, and durable, but, you know, kind of just go out and get muddy for the sake of having fun. Defender is about adventure and heroism and purpose, and it has a certain charm and charisma that's attached to the impact it has, like who it is that it's serving or saving or empowering to make a difference in their community. And that's been true and core to the brand for, as I said, 70 years. If you, if you look back to the beginning of the Red Cross relationship and what we've done to localize that in the United States since relaunching the Defender brand just a few years ago is through a really grassroots and organic concept whereby we invite hyperlocal hands-on charities to submit video applications for the chance to win a Defender. These are organizations in categories like wildlife conservation, veteran services, environmental work, and tend to be organizations that need an off-road capable vehicle to get to challenging to reach places or to accomplish difficult physical challenges. And then we invite our community, our consumers and audiences to vote, and we, across multiple categories. And so now going into its 5th year, we've given away 24 Defender vehicles to these wonderful charities and over $1 million thanks to Chase and our other sponsors. So it's become a collective effort whereby we invite like-minded brands and companies to partner with us. And it's a great content generation machine and a way to showcase the capability of the vehicle in context of these really emotional stories. So kind of the highlight of our year is a brand festival called Destination Defender. That's sort of a weekend festival of modern luxury outdoor adventure. And we usually have the annual gala whereby we honor the, we choose the winners, honor them, and give them the keys to the vehicle, so to speak. And there's never a dry eye in the house. So that's—

I'm sure. I mean, I think there's a lot you touched on there. And at the core of it, I think, is the new way to really drive engagement and capture attention from the consumer, right? If, if when I was growing up, the way that automotive manufacturers captured attention is they ran billboards, magazine ads, TV, very linear, you know, advertising, so to speak. And what you're talking about is anything but. It's content, it's storytelling, it's more emotional. You know, what is that journey like for you as a marketer? And where do you see it going in terms of your ability to take, whether it's the Jaguar brand story or to defend their brand story, or all these different brands that you sit on top of and make sure that you're adequately reaching the consumer in a way where you're actually gonna be able to capture their attention and mindshare in a very challenging landscape to do so.

It's, it's all about the mix. It's a, you know, storytelling and or the organic sort of grassroots one-to-one way that we touch people is an important and authentic way to generate some kind of realness there that, that gives people something to touch and feel that We're not just a car brand. There's actually some, some substance there and something useful. But I am the first, you know, one to go old school and say, you know, what is the job to be done? And Defender is actually the best example of it. It's our newest brand in the States and one that has the most room to grow from an awareness perspective. And especially, you know, knowledge of the brand as a standalone versus its sort of parent brand of Land Rover. We're really driving that Defender and Range Rover are separate brands of their own. And, you know, we're still— we still have such a journey to go on to just grow awareness and appeal and just introduce ourselves to people. And, you know, there's nothing like TV. We do a lot of TV and connected TV. And, you know, it's not the case anymore that it's, you know, difficult to measure or, you know, we have lots of tools now at our disposal to test, you know, closed loop and measure our growth from a sales perspective. And one of my favorite KPIs is tracking looking organic search activity, like are people going to their search engine and looking into us as, you know, an indicator of interest and curiosity that's been shown to be highly predictive of future sales. So we can track that and we can use, you know, a measure of whether people are searching for us immediately upon seeing it on TV as a way to optimize our creative and our media channel choices. So we do love, you know, TV for some of our bigger models like the Defender, Range Rover Sport, but for the lower volume ones, It's, it's so much fun to do these like richer kind of custom content partnerships. We have a beautiful one right now live with The Atlantic with a partnership with Will Guidara, who's a lovely, charismatic entrepreneur who's famous for his work in Unreasonable Hospitality. And as part of our leadership platform for Range Rover, connecting with entrepreneurs, business owners, we recorded some custom content with The Atlantic, just with Will in the vehicle and talking about his perspective on leadership. And it's doing incredibly well. People are sitting down, watching the video, completing the video, and then, you know, clicking through to learn more about the Range Rover brand. So I see, you know, it's all about the mix and the constant testing and optimization and doing what's right for each brand and nameplate.

Yeah, I mean, you're so right in that television used to be more of a spray and pray. Yeah. You know, channel and it was very monolithic. I'm going to target the 18 to 49 demographic. But now, you know, with CTV and addressable media and all the attribution, that you kind of alluded to, you can be pretty precise and leverage the scale of a platform like TV, but also be very data-driven and precise in terms of how you reach people. And to your point, seeing what the trickle-down effect is, first being, it sounds like consumer searching, which is interesting. It's also going to be interesting to me to see how the experience of search changes with AI. You know, I have teenage kids and they don't really use Google as much anymore for searching. They're on ChatGPT searching more and more. So it's gonna be interesting to see how companies like yours and others really optimize, you know, organically, whether it's the content they put out there or other mechanisms to make sure that they're front and center when consumers are searching.

Uh, totally agree.

Chatbot versus traditional search engine.

I totally agree. I think Google has a lot to figure out right now.

Right.

Is what does it mean for advertisers?

At the same time, their new AI tools are pretty powerful as well.

Mm-hmm. But how do optimize— how do advertisers show up in those AI-driven results? I don't think anybody's figured it out yet. That's a really hard space.

I know, it's gonna be fascinating to see for sure. Yeah. So shifting gears, uh, as we wrap up here, Charlotte, I know that your background before your current role was in the agency space. Um, and your last role, uh, before joining the company was Chief Behavioral Officer. And to me that means you really spend a lot of time really trying to decode the consumer and, and the way that they think and how it drives their actions. Talk to me about that experience and how that background and training helped you become the marketer that you are today.

Yeah, I describe myself as a marketer by way of psychology, which I think is true for many of us in marketing and advertising. You know, it's that passion and curiosity for consumer behavior that drives us to this industry. Um, but mine probably more academic than some. So like I've studied neuroscience in undergrad and kind of came back and forth in terms of like more applied advertising roles versus more academic kind of research-oriented ones. The, the latest role before joining JLR was as Chief Behavioral Officer of Merits, which is basically an incentive and reward company that motivates the behavior of stakeholders of our, of our clients at the time, many of whom were automotive manufacturers. So I had a lot of experience running experiments on car dealers, basically, which was a great way to learn very hands-on and pull from our, you know, the scientific toolkit of running randomized controlled trial experiments to really isolate causality. And that was the lesson and something I try to impart to my team, that to lead like a scientist really means to behave as a scientist would, no matter what the question is at hand. It's to come up with an informed hypothesis based on the data you have available and then to truly experiment with it, meaning have a holdout control group and isolate the change, um, so you can know that the thing you tried is actually— yeah, is actually what caused the change. And that's such a basic fundamental tenet of science, but it's something that's overlooked in sort of business management. Sometimes when people say test or experiment, they just mean like try it and see, um, but of course then you can't really be sure if what you're seeing is because of what you did. So that's kind of like my, my main like rule of thumb and something that most digital marketers are doing accidentally anyway, just when you buy advertising and a digital partner. But I think what, what's really exciting now is some work we've been doing with actual clinical psychiatrists— psychologists, excuse me, PhDs in behavioral science and consumer psychology and people who are working with AI to find ways to apply these and these academically rigorous scales of personality trait and the way people make decisions and the way people are motivated and apply that to the consumer landscape and help us to identify differences in what predicts likelihood to purchase, say, a Defender versus a Range Rover Sport. And we're finding such interesting differences that are really useful in our house of brand strategy that we wouldn't have just looking at demographic information or even, even self-report. You know, what do you do with your spare time on the weekend? You know, people of a certain income level kind of look a little bit similar on paper. They— I like to go to nice restaurants, I like to play golf, I like to, you know, go do things outside with my family. But when we can get really under the hood, so to speak, and see, you know, certain people are more impulsive than others or some are, you know, tend to be more community-oriented, these sort of insights that give us and just a nugget that we can use for creative briefs that really bring things to life in a more emotional way that resonates with people. Is making, um, such a difference in sort of unlocking our creative potential.

It's interesting because so much discussion in the advertising marketing space right now is about AI and what is the role of the human. And, you know, what you just described is essentially what makes us uniquely human. You know, we are not just rational beings, we're emotional beings. The reason brands exist is that we're emotional and we get attached to things that don't always really make rational sense. The reason that people pay $5,000 for handbags make makes no rational sense whatsoever. Yet the luxury category in that space is booming, right? And I think—

Totally.

Ultimately, underneath all this, how you put it, is what's beneath the hood. And I think that is going to be a, um, you know, a science that's going to get more and more valuable in the age of AI. Because I think holding on to what makes people uniquely human is going to be the key ingredient in a world where everything else is going to be largely commoditized. Everybody's going to have access to AI, but people truly understand consumers, I think, are going to be ones that are going to most be able to put it to work for you.

Oh, so true. Couldn't agree more.

Cool. So wrapping up here, obviously you had a really cool role overseeing some really iconic brands. And just for our audience who maybe is at a younger point in their career that want to end up in a CMO seat one day, what are some of the steps you took along the way that you think were the right moves, whether it was the areas that you focused on or the relationships that you built? That you believe put you in the position that you are in today?

For my journey specifically, it was, it was following this, this passion for psychology. And I remember when my dad dropped me off at college, he was like, just study what you think is interesting. Don't, don't major in business. You'll learn that on the job later, you know? And that, yeah. And that, like, I hope that's not outdated. I know everything is like really messed up now with the whole educational system and non-affordability and, you know, but that I've, I think about that often, you know, like just that, studying neuro way back then and the path that that set me on and sort of being true to that. And even when I went into media advertising brand roles, there was always sort of a way for me to keep one foot in that space of, you know, the kind of keeping up with the psychology that's relevant. So that allowed me to, A, just stay engaged and stay, you know, interested and productive because I really enjoy it. But it also helped me to develop a a personal brand, so to speak, and kind of stay in a path that at least looking back retrospectively, I could draw a red thread through. So that kind of became like my thing. So I guess that's a really general bit of advice I guess I would give is to find your thing and like find a way to stick with it. You can always kind of stretch around it and expand it, but kind of, you know, make, make this one thing your, your area of interest that you could tell a story around.

Yeah. And create differentiation in the marketplace that can often be a sea of sameness where everyone's saying the same thing, reading the same things and regurgitating it. If you have this kind of point of differentiation, you can lean into it. Then whether it's in interviews or whether it's manifesting to some of the campaigns that you talked about today in terms of what goes into the real world, you are able to put your stamp on it in a unique way. Yeah, absolutely. So we often wrap our interviews by asking our guests if there's a, saying or mantra that they believe has defined their professional journey to date? And just wondering what might come to mind for you.

Oh, well, I guess I teased it. My saying is lead like a scientist.

There you go. And, and is there any, I guess, person you follow or book that you've read that if other people want to lead like a scientist, you would recommend?

Yes. Um, I bet many listeners of your podcast are fans of Dan Ariely, who's a very well-known behavioral economist who kind of, I think, personally championed the applied space of behavioral science. He's really kind of brought that to mass market and to business leaders and found, you know, ways to talk about it conversationally that get people excited and engaged. So I, I love Dan and have read and watched everything he's ever done and can't get enough of Dan.

Awesome. We'll have to check him out. And, um, I appreciate you, uh, checking out the podcast and joining today. It's been a great chat and a very different and enlightening one relative to a lot of the marketing discussions that we have, and I think that our audience is going to get a lot of value. So thanks so much for joining today, Charlotte.

Thanks, Matt. It was a lot of fun. Absolutely.

On behalf of Suzy and Edward Keene, thanks again to Charlotte Blank, the CMO of Jaguar Land Rover North America, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, see you soon, everyone. Take care.